Student pilots learn very early in their flying career how to avoid cloud and maintain visual reference to the ground. Even so, the classic case of a VFR pilot caught in IMC remains one of the most chilling scenarios in general aviation. The situation is made all the more critical when rising terrain is factored into the equation. Controlled flight into terrain occurs when a pilot, in full command of his airplane, points the nose at something too dense to fly through, presumably because he cannot see it. Accident investigators continue to theorize about what possesses non-instrument rated pilots to press on into weather conditions they are not qualified to fly through.
On the morning of January 24, 2003, I was given a firsthand lesson on how swiftly a poor decision can turn a routine flight into a career-altering experience. I was a new flight instructor with just enough time under my belt to believe I knew what I was doing. My student was training for her commercial license and we had been impatiently waiting weeks for the weather to give us a break so we could brush up on her power-on stalls before the impending flight test. We departed out of Boundary Bay Airport, about 10 miles southeast of Vancouver International, in an older Cessna 172 with the ceiling at 1,500 feet and a strong headwind out of the east.
