Jay Honeck wrote:
Wait a minute...this seems a bit odd, coming from a pilot who *also*
doesn't have an instrument rating.

Now here's one from an ATP. I mostly agree with you.

1. Time. In 2002 I trained right up to the point where I was to be
signed off to take the IR flight test. Then we bought the hotel. It
just ain't gonna happen now, and never will until we get out of the
business we're in.

All the time that I have EVER saved by eliminating or reducing delays
hasn't added up to the time I spent getting the instrument rating,
never mind staying current. And I got mine with substantially less
than 40 hours of instrument flight training, the balance being hood
time on trips I would have flown anyway.

2. Utility. For giggles, we tracked our flying pattern for a year, and
kept track of the number of flights that we could have made with the
IR, that we didn't make VFR. In other words, how many flights were
cancelled because we didnt't have the rating.

The answer was amazing, to me. There were just a handfull -- three --
times that we would have flown with the IR, that we didn't fly. This
out of over 100 flights.

And even with an instrument rating, it will never be zero. For a pilot
willing and able to fly MVFR, the utility advantage of an instrument
rating in a light single is minimal.

The reasons are simple: Most of our instrument weather in the upper
Midwest is of the kind that you would need a Pilatus (or better) to fly
in. Since we don't have icing capability, that essentially eliminates
flying in clouds from now through next March.

That's not totally true - but it's not all that far from the truth
either. Every time you launch into clouds in subfreezing weather
without deice capability, you're rolling the dice. Your plane, though,
has enough horsepower to make it a fairly good bet at times. If you
were flying a Cherokee 140, I would be in nearly full agreement with
you, but with your airplane you can do some winter IFR flying with
reasonable safety.

Question is, how often will that happen? Most stable winter IMC
features ceilings and visibilities high enough to make low VFR
reasonable out in the flatlands where you live.

And then the thunderstorms start.

That's the one part where you are wrong. Cockpit weather is now
available at reasonable prices, so you could fly the summer.

Thing is, I don't remember that much IMC associated with thunderstorms
in the Midwest when I flew there. Usually, the weather outside the
cells was decent enough VFR.

So the bottom line is that you will be able to get some utility out of
your instrument rating - but at best your deployability will change
from say 93% to 99%, and the delays you eliminate (be they waiting for
weather to improve or driving) will never make up for the time you
spend getting the rating and keeping it current.

It's important to remember that no form of travel is guaranteed to get
you there on time. Cars break down and traffic jams happen. Airliners
get delayed for weather, maintenance, and other reasons. The
difference is not that private flying is so much less reliable (in my
experience that wasn't the case) but that it's pretty easy to justify
the delays caused by the airlines or the highway system to others.
Delays in private airplanes are seen as being your own fault, for
choosing this oddball method of transportation, by others. The key
here is others. Wives, bosses, etc. Well, in your case your wife is a
pilot and so is your boss, so no problem there. And it's damn rare to
have a situation where a 1% chance of not getting there on time is
acceptable and a 7% chance is not (remember, no airline is 99% on time
for any flight).

I find it truly pathetic that some pilots actually have the nerve to
tell other pilots that VFR flying is not a reliable way to travel - but
getting the instrument rating suddenly makes it OK.

3. Instrument Flying Sucks. This is something I've rarely seen
discussed here (maybe never?), but instrument flying is one of the most
boring things I've done.

Instrument flying in light airplanes appeals to daredevil technogeeks,
and damn few others. Most people think it sucks. I can certainly
understand them, though I don't agree with them.

In the instrument flights I've flown, the flying experience has been
much closer to Microsoft Flight Simulator than any sort of a real
flying experience

Well, here's the problem. Training flights are mostly under the hood
or in actual, but real IFR flights are usually flown mostly in VMC.
You do get to see some cool stuff doing that.

4. Safety. This may sound counter-intuitive, but of all the instrument
pilots I know -- and I know a LOT of pilots -- there is only ONE that I
would fly with in the soup. The rest are technically instrument
pilots, but they fly instruments so infrequently that I know -- and
they do, too -- that they are not proficient.

That's about what I've seen. When you look at people who have had the
instrument rating for more than a couple of years, most of them fall
into two groups - those who could get the ATP with little trouble if
they so wished, and those who aren't as good flying instruments today
as they were the day they passed the instrument checkride.

No real surprise - either you go forwards or backwards, as there is no
standing still. Most go backwards. The instrument rating standards
are minimum standards, and someone who can't meet them really shouldn't
be flying IFR.

Michael