One of the most surprising things that emerged from the Air Safety Institute’s updated analysis of instructional accidents (www.aopa.org/training_report) was the discovery that fatal accidents were twice as common in advanced fixed-wing training as in primary—and among all the different types of advanced instruction, they happened most often during instrument training.
This was startling for two reasons. Virtually every minute of the IFR curriculum is spent near the middle of the flight envelope, climbing or descending at 500 feet per minute while limiting turns to standard rate, and all on routes meticulously tailored to keep aircraft clear of both man-made obstructions and terra firma. And as in all advanced training, both the instructor providing and the pilot receiving it presumably already know how to fly that airplane.
The numbers are pretty stark. More than 40 percent of all accidents on instrument training flights were fatal. No other well-defined course of study came close. Stranger still, only three of 21 fatal accidents had anything to do with the actual execution of instrument procedures. Instead, pilots and their instructors were tripped up by fuel mismanagement, inadvertent stalls before or after the instrument portion of the flight, controlled flight into terrain, or loss of control in visual conditions. Most telling, almost one-quarter (five of 21) were midair collisions, including one between two airplanes in which the pilot of each was conducting hood work. Given that these constituted the majority of the nine fatal midairs in all advanced instruction combined, it seems pretty clear that when the student is unable to see outside at all, the CFI also has to pay a lot of attention to the panel—not exactly the ideal recipe for practicing “see and avoid.”
Let’s not exaggerate the risk. We’re talking about five fatal accidents over 10 years nationwide, just 2.5 percent of all fatalities during fixed-wing instruction in that time. But we put a lot of time and attention into avoiding midairs, which might be one reason they’re so rare. The fact that they’re 10 times as likely to happen during hood work might be reason to give a little more thought to when, where, and how you’ll conduct that kind of training—and what precautions you’ll take before you do.
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