IFR Magazine

We spend most of our IFR lives wrapped in the warm cocoon of radar coverage, vectored from point to point by the all-seeing presence of ATC. And while controllers are human and occasionally make mistakes, the checks and safety nets in place rarely result in close calls, let alone bent metal. Its also true that when clearances get tight in the final descent to the airport, responsibility is handed over to the pilot.

To assume that an aircraft automation system has a will of its own and will try to kill us would be anthropomorphic. Autopilots and other automation systems have not reached that stage of sophistication. Not yet. What can-and too often does-happen, however, is that flight crews turn the flying duties over to the autopilot and relax. With frightening repetition, this ends in disaster.

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At the end of 2015, the FAA counted 590,039 active certificated pilots. Divide that by the over-18 population of about 248 million people in July, 2015 and we discover that pilots make up just 0.24 percent of the population. If that doesnt mark us as nonconformists, what does? There is a place for out-of-the-box thinking in aviation, even in that most rigid domain of airline aviation. I would rather fly with someone possessing something like Sullys creativity than fly with a living automaton who would have gone right to the FMS looking for a solution while the airplane descended inexorably toward earth. Im certain there are creative cockpit thinkers taking creative and appropriate actions every day. They just dont make the front page.

The FAAs long-awaited ADS-B rebate program launched on September 19, and drew more than 1300 applicants in the first two days, according to David Gray, the FAAs ADS-B program manager. A robotic co-pilot that can be quickly installed in a variety of aircraft has been successfully tested in a Diamond DA-42 and a Cessna Caravan by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Textron Aviation flew its prototype Citation Longitude for the first time, in October. The super-midsize Longitude was announced in 2012. The crew of a Hawker 700A jet that crashed in Akron, Ohio, a year ago showed a disregard for safety, NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart said in October, and the company they worked for, Execuflight, also fell short of their obligations.”

The multiple steps involved in filing NOTAMs and PIREPs can steal time from a controllers main purpose of separating aircraft. From their first transmission as a trainee, controllers have the term priority of duty bashed into their head. Allowing two aircraft to get too close because you were distracted by a PIREP or a NOTAM is not an option.

When I was based at PDK airport, a very busy airport in Atlanta, GA used by many business jets, the tower would routinely route smaller aircraft approaching from the east to cross over mid-field at or above pattern altitude and enter a left downwind for Runway 3L. Doing so while there were other aircraft in the pattern, landing and taking off. The reason was to keep the longer Runway 3R open for business jets landing and taking off. In this instance, a pilot would be crossing over two active runways.

We need completely realistic virtual avionics. Ive been ringing this bell for a decade now and have achieved exactly nothing. Simulator training for real-world pilots is crippled without them. Pilots cant practice the buttonology, which atrophies even faster than a six-pack scan. Pilots also want their own panels to fly virtually. I say thats one of the biggest barriers to expanding the use of simulation.

Weather and NOTAMs are a huge percentage of the mountains of data controllers process daily, and a significant chunk of that comes from pilot reports. Some pilots wonder how the information they share gets processed by ATC. As one IFR reader expressed: It appears that most reports of icing/tops/bases that are reported to ATC never make it into the PIREP system.

Everyone trains for that circle-to-land maneuver from an instrument approach, but theres also an occasional need to fly circling departures. These can put you in the most marginal visual conditions waiting for the official IFR clearance. The usual suspects-weather, obstacles and flying the airplane-all come into play when youre in that murky transition between VFR and IFR.