David Megginson wrote in message ...

Right. Personally, I think that safety flying in IMC comes mostly
from the ability to prioritize, defer, and negotiate, not from any
extra equipment in the plane.

At a fundamental level, this is correct. No amount of fancy
gear can compensate for fundamental flying skills (or the lack
thereof) and for pilot judgement.

However, other things being equal, I don't think there can be
any doubt that extra equipment adds to safety. I personally
would not care to argue that a SE plane flown by a proficient
pilot is as safe or safer than a ME plane flown by a proficient
pilot -- how can it be, when the extra engine/alternator/vacuum
pump provide levels of redundancy and additional options after
a failure which most SE planes lack.

You?

The same is fundamentally true of any equipment which adds
redundancy or options.

For example, there is no reason that a complex new routing should
increase your risk of being in an accident with or without an AP or
IFR GPS -- if there is a higher risk, it's because the pilot stops
prioritizing and fixates on the rerouting task.

This is fundamentally false. You appear to be focusing only
on one aspect of the issue.

If there is a higher *immediate* risk, it is because the pilot
stops flying the plane to fixate on the immediate task.

But that's far from the only risk. Rerouting can become part
of an accident chain, if the ramefications of the rerouting aren't
completely understood, including its effect on fuel status, enroute
weather, and destination weather.

I appreciate that there are pilots here who feel that they fly so
well that they have ample excess brain power and time to get
and process wx updates, recalculate their ETAs and fuel, and so
forth and so on. However, I don't think it's arguable that the
same pilots would have MORE brain capacity to devote to these
issues if they were able to enlist "George" while they transcribed
their wx and gave a little extra attention to an enroute chart.
Maybe most of the time, that extra capacity isn't needed, but maybe
sometime the particular parameters and conditions of the flight
will require more.

I feel there is a reason why a number of experienced and skilled
pilots feel an autopilot adds appreciably to the safety of single
pilot IFR ops, and it's not that they're incapable of controlling
the airplane at a near-automatic level whilest talking to ATC.

I suppose it's possible that their cranial capacity is simply more
limited than those who feel to the contrary, but this strikes me
as a hubristic assumption. YMMV.

I'm sure that most pilots
appreciate the reroutings, though, since they have IFR GPS's and the
reroutings might save them five or ten minutes.

We have yet to receive a significant rerouting which *saved* us
appreciable time. FWIW.

Sydney