When I prepared my post about the new Cirrus Perspective, which includes G1000 and an upgraded autopilot, I read some info about an auto-pilot button labelled “LVL”, for wings-level. This sounded to me like the basic mode of most autopilors, I was even surprised that so many reports were even mentioning it.

It’s only when I read an AOPA news post calling it “emergency switch”. This auto-pilot mode is indeed a new and cool thing: it does bring the aircraft in wings-level and pitch-level from (nearly) any attitude ! As long as the bank does not exceed 75° and the pitch does not exceed 50° (both rather extreme…), pressing this button will make the autopilot restore wing and pitch level attitude.

Even if all IFR pilots are trained for unusual attitude recovery, this is not an easy thing. Turbulence in IMC can be challenging, and loss of spatial orientation is sadly not a seldom thing. So if everything else fails, this button can be a life saver.

Missing what this new feature is, and how good it is was for me a practical lesson about human performance. In the first report I read, it simply sounded like “that’s not really new…”. When I got additional information, my mindset turned towards “you guys are annoying me with that”.

I strongly sticked to my original idea, and simply removed that possibility that I could have a wrong understanding for the list of options. Which of the five dangerous attitudes do you recognize in that (more than one correct answer) ?

This was my personal “I learned about flying from doing that blog” lesson for today, and I’m not particularly proud about that. Hope it will help someone else.

UPDATE: Strangely, the editor of AviationWorld had the same kind of reaction, and also published about it here.