After flying almost exclusively IFR between airports that have SIDS, STARs, IAPs etc for many years, I have found myself feeling very uncomfortable flying VFR compared to my pre-IR days and am wondering what experience others have had in this regard and how they have overcome that discomfort.
Based on my analysis, the discomfort (and sometimes outright stress) seems to have come primarily from the fact that flying VFR is (by design) less precise than IFR flying and therefore I feel I am not flying “quite as well”, stemming from the following factors:
I didn’t have the same discomfort in my VFR only-flying days. Has anyone had similar experiences and how did you then overcome that discomfort?
Wolfgang
I know exactly what you’re talking about. In my case, I’ve found that putting the onus on the controller to keep separation is quite addictive and going back to VFR, where you have to “work at it” to not crash into other aircraft, can be quite taxing. Not only that, IFR removed the possibility of you busting some airspace or restricted area too. I still do VFR for shorter trips, or when the clearance is easier or better to pick up in the air than on the ground, but I’m not as “comfortable” with it as I was.
You are responsible for your own terrain separation even when IFR.
I can’t find a link to the final accident report, and it’s perhaps different in Sweden, but my understanding is that if you’re on an IFR flight plan ATC should never clear you below a safe altitude until you start the approach. They don’t have responsibility for terrain clearance unless they’re vectoring you, but I still don’t think they’ll ever intentionally instruct you to go to an unsafe altitude. Obviously errors happen, and pilots should maintain situational awareness, to cross check ATC, but they should never endanger you. But maybe you meant something else?
redRover wrote:
I can’t find a link to the final accident report, and it’s perhaps different in Sweden, but my understanding is that if you’re on an IFR flight plan ATC should never clear you below a safe altitude until you start the approach. They don’t have responsibility for terrain clearance unless they’re vectoring you, but I still don’t think they’ll ever intentionally instruct you to go to an unsafe altitude. Obviously errors happen, and pilots should maintain situational awareness, to cross check ATC, but they should never endanger you. But maybe you meant something else?
In the case of the Norwegian C-130 they were flying in uncontrolled airspace at the time of the crash. In short, the controller had issued a descent clearance and the crew descended early, leaving controlled airspace. Given the airspace structure, it made sense to descend (partly) in uncontrolled airspace. That would have been perfectly fine if they had only checked the minimum safe altitude.
(After the accident, the Swedish rules were changed so that a controller can’t issue a clearance that could take an aircraft outside controlled airspace except on the explicit request by the pilot.)
wbardof, why not just fly navaid to navaid then? Presumably you have a gps as well as the ifr instrumentation needed so all that is missing is the “controller” telling you what to do next. Sounds easy to me as that is what many of us do.
It is ironic that the whole world of flight training is upside down.
VFR is, indeed, more difficult than IFR. But equally jets are easier than pistons, multicrew is easier than single pilot, bigger aircraft are easier than small ones, automation is easier than manual etc etc.
Yet, ab initio we have to start at VFR single crew hand flown SEPs using paper charts and whizzwheels and work “up” to a point where greater respect is shown to the professional, multi, instrument rated jet pilot than the SEP VFR pilot.
I have seen several airline training captains coming quite unstuck flying VFR OCAS.
VFR is just as much a skill that has to be learned and kept current as IFR, and has plenty more gotchas.
But equally we have to guard against becoming Children of the Magenta
Sorry, let me clarify my point on terrain separation: One would still need to consider terrain (even more so for IFR than for VFR), however following published routes and IAPs would ensure that you have sufficient terrain clearance as they have been flight tested. Also, radar vectoring in controlled airspace should keep you above terrain unless the controller makes a mistake. In uncontrolled airspace, it is definitely a very important consideration, including for airfields without published IAPs.
To come back to the original intention of the thread, I would still be interested in your experiences.
Thanks
Wolfgang
I recently was pax in an A320 on approach to Pisa when they announced that local conditions required them to cancel their approach and everybody should look out the window because the tilted tower would be visible. So, guess what they did: They flew a normal VFR traffic pattern – downwind, crosswind, final, into Pisa Airport.. Gear down, slow speed, unusual pitch attitude, but wonderfully flown.
