Pilots like me, holding a PPL and an Instrument rating are exceptions in Europe. The JAA system makes the Instrument Ticket quit hard to obtain. The theory is almost the same as for a full ATPL. Distance learning systems make it a bit easier, but it’s still frustrating and time consuming. Approach fees that comes on top of the landing fees are not excessive, but they slightly increase the cost of flying. So why did I decide to get my IFR rating ? From my very first flight, I wanted to become an IFR pilot. Being a software engineer, this systematical approach to flying was really attractive. I like to manage systems, and modern avionics like GPS, autopilots, and now glass-cockpits are quite of a challenge.

For obvious financial and aircraft availability reasons, my flying was always limited to single engine aircraft. I rapidly found out that this means “nice weather IFR”only. Any forecast calling for icing or embedded thunderstorm is simply a no-go. Without a turbo engine and a pressurized airframe, there is no way to deal with ice. The performance of a single engine piston is simply not sufficient to escape icing. And without on-board weather radar, getting IMC where thunderstorms can be hidden in the layer is also not an option. Even airliners don’t penetrate thunderstorms.

The golden rules of VFR flying are simple: see and avoid other aircraft, and navigate using map, clock, and compass. Nowadays, radio-navigation and GPS are of great help for VFR pilots, but the rules are still valid. Obviously, there is no way to respect these rules by entering clouds, which VFR pilots must cautiously avoid. IFR is based on procedures flown along radio-navigation signals, or following headings given by air-traffic controllers. Even when using radio-navigation, the air-traffic controllers ensure that no aircraft follows a conflicting route, whether in clouds or not.

VFR is a world of freedom. Fly from A to B following the route you want – as long as you avoid airspace “protected” for IFR. The lake you’re flying by looks nice, and you want to descend, or fly a couple of orbits to enjoy the view ? Feel free, as long as you continue to “see and avoid”. IFR pilots don’t have this freedom. The route filed in the flight plan has to be followed. The en-route segments can be quite long from VOR to VOR, or from one intersection to another. If you don’t like the idea of flying straight and level for more than 100 nautical miles, simply looking at the instruments to make sure you’re still on the road, and not flying up-side down, you’ll not enjoy cruising in IFR.

So why flying IFR ? At first, it’s a wonderful intellectual challenge. Seeing the approach lights few seconds before reaching the missed approach point is an unprecedented emotion. All IFR pilots I know confirm that learning IFR helped them to fly more accurately and safely. The point is not to enter clouds and hope that the “big are the sky” theory will avoid a mid-air collision, or to declare an emergency and request a joining. But flying IFR requires a bit more accuracy, and controlling an aircraft with no other reference than the artificial horizon requires some practice.

From a navigation point of view, IFR is much easier than VFR. If you ever struggled to find a VFR reporting point, or a landmark that looked obvious on a chart, you know what I mean. I personally never found the Ecuvillens (LSGE) airfield where I thought it would be, not to mention the point W of the Bern (LSZB) airport, which is all but clearly defined. I had to cope with some unclear IFR procedures, but they’re an exception. Most of them are extremely simple, based on radials, ILS, and DME distances. Tune the instruments correctly, follow the needles, do good crosschecks, and IFR procedures will bring you anywhere in the world. There are three things that an IFR pilot must know: follow a radial (or an ILS), fly a track reversal procedure, and a holding. IFR flights are combinations of these elements.

As few pilots have IFR ratings in Europe there are many myths about it. The first is that it’s expensive. Apart from the approach fees, en-route fees apply but only for aircrafts heavier than 2000 kgs, so SEPs are usually not concerned. What is expensive is to fly a high performance single engine aircraft but this applies to both IFR and VFR. While it is possible to fly IFR in simpler aircrafts I personally don’t really like it. I like to have spare power and be able to fly approaches at sufficient speed to integrate with airline traffic. This is possible with aircrafts like the PA32 Saratoga, the Cessna 210, the Cirrus, Mooneys, or the Bonanza. I remember flying as safety-pilot in a Cessna 172 departing Zurich (LSZH). Our ground speed on the SID was 52 knots – not exactly glorious. We were off-peak so there was not a lot of traffic behind. While it’s not pilot’s responsibility to ensure separation, integrating a low-speed aircraft in jet traffic on final is not easy for ATC. Some airports have a PPR system to maintain their capacity, and the typical question from approach controllers to light aircraft is “What will be your speed on final ?”. 160 is an acceptable answer. 120 almost always result in late interception or vectoring on a parallel trajectory and sometimes holding.

Another myth is that IFR requires a lot of mental calculation. Apart from descent planning (altitude difference in thousand feet multiplied by three), I can’t think of any. Even holding and their entries can be flown using good visualization techniques. Once you have a sufficient mental representation of your position, heading and intended trajectory using the HSI, everything boils down to reading headings on the instrument.

Many pilots also think that IFR is a complex rating to maintain. In JAA context, a checkride each year is the sole way to keep the rating valid. No less, no more. No minimal number of hours, approaches, holdings or so. As long as the underlying class rating (SEP or MEP) is valid, the instrument rating can be revalidated with a check flight. The required elements are (forgive me if I forget some) one precision approach, one non-precision approach, one holding and one go-around. The question is not what is required to renew the rating, but what is required to remain proficient. As always there is no regulation about this. I personally think that one couple of IFR flights a month are sufficient, as long as you use it to practice important skills, including manual flying.

The training towards the IFR rating is longer than the basic PPL training. 50 hours, of which a good share can be in a simulator – the exact numbers depend of the kind of training and simulator. Simulator is an excellent tool to acquire the fundamentals of IFR flying, but nothing is like actual aircraft flying. For pilots that will fly alone and not in a multi-crew environment, it is good to take at least half of the training in aircraft and not in simulator. I personally think that it’s much better to take this training in a rather short period of time, between one and three months. It’s not so easy to combine such intensive flying with a full-time job, so taking days or half days off is a good option. IFR training flights are also usually longer than basic PPL training, so don’t expect something like a one-hour IFR training session.

It is a common saying that single-pilot IFR is the hardest kind of flying. I don’t have experience with all possibly kinds of flying (no aerobatics, no jet, no mountain landings, no glider, …) but what I can confirm is that single-pilot IFR create a high workload. Cockpit and charts management alone is almost a full-time job. Autopilots and modern integrated cockpits like the G1000 or the Avidyne Entegra help to reduce the workload but any pilot should be able to revert to more basic flying modes if so required. Crew resources management (CRM) takes all its sense in such operations. ATC is an important partner and safety-pilot or even passengers can be taken “in the loop” to help manage complex situations.

Another important skill that IFR pilots have to develop is weather decision making. VFR flying is much more simple. IFR pilots have the possibility to fly in clouds, but not in all of them. Predicting the evolution of weather phenomena like fog and cumulative activity is not easy. It’s legal to depart to a destination with reported low visibility, but if the visibility is below minimums no approach can be flown. And simply “giving it a chance” is not a good idea. Stratus or fog often dissipate but it’s not easy to accurately say when. As long as there is sufficient fuel to wait everything is fine, but fog can cover large areas and it’s important to have an alternate airport sufficiently far away to ensure it will not be closed as well. One of the new factor to take in account when it comes to the go / no-go decision is temperature. Temperature’s role in VFR is limited to performance calculation. Flying in IMC at temperatures below zero means icing – and this is the last thing IFR pilots want. I trained in Geneva (LSGG) airport which is surrounded by mountains. The airport itself is at 1′350 feet but the IFR downinds and departure climbs are to 7′000 feet. The ISA temperature gradient is 2° per 1000 feet, which means that any ground temperature below 12° C involves risks of icing if flying in IMC. The downwind legs are up tp 30 nautical miles long, not something that a light aircraft can sustain in icing conditions.

This naturally leads to the question of the minimums. Light aircraft and regional airports are usually certified for Category I approaches. This corresponds to a ceiling of 200 feet and a visibility of 550 meters (some restrictions apply which are too boring to be listed here). Better equipped aircrafts can be certified to Categories II or III, which minimums can be as low as zero ceiling and zero visibility. This requires much more equipment, and particularly a radio-altimeter. Getting down the glide-slope to 200 feet (60 meters) in a light aircraft means that the decision to go-around is based only on the baro-altimeter. Getting any foot below the minimums can be quite risky. Remember that these 200 feet are above threshold, not surrounding obstacles… The definition of the 200 feet minimum is partly based on the accuracy of the altimeters, and the safety margins close to the minimus are rather limited. Can any IFR pilot fly any approaches under any circumstances ? I d0n’t think so. Each pilot must know his personal minimums which depend on many factors: recency, aircraft performance, personal fitness, length of the flight, and many others. The major advantage of IFR is to escape marginal VFR weather. Low level stratus or haze is no longer a problem with an IFR rating. If you live in an area affected by such weather (Geneva can have up to three consecutive weeks with stratus at 800 feet with tops below 2′000 in February), or if you live in a region with no high grounds, there is no need to climb into negative temperatures. and IFR can make much more flying possible.

A description of IFR flying would not be exhaustive without talking about flying in IMC and spatial desorientation. Our body can not feel speed but only acceleration, and most of our orientation comes from visual clues. Flying under the hood has not much in common with actual IMC, because shadows in the cockpit give some hints regarding where the sun is, and if the plane is turning or not. There are no such things in IMC. Night VFR is much closer to IMC than simulated IMC. The body tends to amplify any minor sensation and generate incorrect feelings. This is why IFR pilots have to trust instruments more than their bottom end… The probability of an instrument failure is much lower than this of spatial disorientation. When suspecting an artificial horizon failure the first thing to do is to crosscheck with the backup horizon and with other instruments. One instrument can fail, two in case of vacuum failure, but not all at the same time. It takes a great deal of effort to trust the instruments over one’s personal feelings. To me the hardest thing is to fly intermittent IMC. The sudden changes in light, light turbulence induced by entering IMC and frequent changes of focal point between dashboard and outside make it hard.

Because flying on the instruments requires to give almost constant focus on the attitude indicator, IFR pilots have also to learn to divide their attention. The human brain can not concentrate on two things at the same time nor process the information from all flight instruments as a whole. One of the first steps in IFR training is to learn how to scan the instruments. The idea is to read each instrument and come back to the attitude indicator in between and to crosscheck values. Divided attention implies much more than simple scanning. Even simple when performing simple tasks like tuning a radio frequency or getting a chart out while preparing the approach has to be interrupted to take a look at the attitude indicator. A change in attitude can occur quickly and result in a heading or altitude change. When IFR pilots close their eyes, they see an attitude indicator…

All in all, IFR is a different way of flying. It has advantages and drawbacks when compared to VFR. It’s not better or worst but different and complementary. I never regretted to get and maintain my instrument rating and hope to continue profiting from it for years.