How safe is it, really?

"Dan Luke" wrote in message
...
wrote:
[snip]
while I agree that a person needs to use the rating to stay proficient,
even going through the training, ground work and testing to get it will
make him/her more competent unless they forget everything once they're
done with the checkride.

Which they often do, in my experience. On the occasions when I've flown
in
the right seat with a couple of these guys, it's been obvious to me they
were not proficient, even though they were current by the reg's.


Two of my partners call me once every six months to sit in the right seat
while they fly some approaches and hold on a VOR. Their procedures and radio
work are clumsy but their aircraft control is pretty solid. Neither have
filed an IFR flight plan in probably some years, but if they ended up in IMC
I don't see any reason to think they wouldn't get the plane on the ground at
an airport with their passengers' underwear still clean.

This sort of "survival IFR" probably does not require you to be able to make
an approach down to ILS minimums in a howling storm. The only places close
to me that I can think of where conditions go from MVFR to LIFR that rapidly
are along the atlantic coast where fog can roll in quite rapidly. However,
if you're flying to Nantucket and this happens, you can probably do a 180
and head back inland where it's likely CAVU to the moon. I have a lot more
trust that this sort of pilot will survive the kind of encounters with
weather that can happen when VFR turns into MVFR or MIFR, than one who has
little or no instrument training.

But in the end we cannot really use statistics to guide us, since we can
really only guess at the number of hours flown in IMC versus VMC.

-cwk.