speed550

After watching a youtube promo video I was wondering does it make flying to EZ? The testimonials explained what a pain in the neck it is to fly complicated situations. I would imagine that a good pilot would want a good challenge. Is this a fair way to measure a pilot’s commitment to flying? My fear is that armatures will attempt IFR flying using the G1000.

When I begin my flight training I want to distance my self from the G1000, and focus on the fundamentals.

HSLD

IMO a "good" pilot would want cockpit instrumentation that can provide additional margins of safety. The glass cockpits in use today can improve situational awareness and presumably safety, although sometimes at the risk of decreased pilot proficiency.

For learning basic attitude instrument flying, you don't need a moving map. In fact, avoiding the moving map will force you to focus on the fundamentals and save you some money.

As for flying in IFR conditions, if a pilot isn't IFR rated, its illegal. If they are rated, they should be proficient in any aircraft/cockpit setup they happen to be flying.

rickair7777

I think the map needs to be disabled until the student masters BAI flying and has good situation awareness by reference to navaids.

As to whether you use a steam-gauge six-pack or a garmin-style PFD...

I would have no trouble training on a new IR student on the PFD if that's what he is going to fly (wealthy business man, doctor, etc who owns such an airplane, or is planning to).

But if the student is career oriented or not-so-well-off I know darn well that he's going to be flying steam gauges. I would insist on starting that student on analog instruments, and achieving proficiency. Glass is easy, you can always learn that later.

But if a glass-only pilot jumped into an old airplane (perfectly legal) and something went wrong with the instruments, he would DIE within minutes. I have no doubt about that. He might die even if nothing goes wrong with the equipment.

NoyGonnaDoIt

I'm wiling to bet that when pilots started using A-N Ranges for radio navigation, someone asked that exact same question (except for the YouTube part of course ).

I doubt that, with decent training the transition in either direction is that big a deal or that the transition from glass to gas is substantially more difficult than the other way around - there is more workload in the set-up for glass than gas and I've seen pilots very distracted by it.

I have two rules of thumb:

One is that you train for what you expect to fly. If you're going to be a renter and there's a lot of glass available, no reason not to go for it. OTOH, if you're going for a career, a solid grounding in traditional instruments is going to go a long way to getting ready to fly an old Metro with no autopilot in those early jobs.

The other is that you train with what's available and inexpensive and get the job done.

The two will sometimes lead to opposite results but that's what balancing choices is all about.

Cubdriver

I'll mirror the first two responses- hobby pilot with a strong likelihood of staying behind a particular panel should train using that system. Professional track pilots who need to be able to adapt quickly to a variety of systems should get all their tickets on steam, and I would recommend against using the G1000 for primary instrument training for anyone who does not plan to use the Garmin exclusively afterwards. After CFI it doesn't really matter what you use because glass is easy enough to add and going forward is much easier than going backward.

GA glass systems were intended to consolidate the functions of previously isolated panel instruments. The general trend throughout history has been to more panel organization. All-glass was a natural consequence of the existing trend but it skipped a beat in the process. There was a point in the early 1990s when a few glass instruments were finding their way into GA cockpits but a wholesale switch to glass panels did not occur until Garmin lowered the cost on glass enough to permit volume sales. Thanks to Garmin for doing that and their system is great, but the overnight swap left a hole in primary training that we are still trying to fill.

My personal feeling that basic trainers for the private and instrument ticket should have little or no glass in them at all. When I taught on the G1000 system, my students were swamped with needless information and I often had to spend the first 20 hours getting them used to the panel when they could have been concentrating on basic flying skills. It bothers me that primary training is so often done on the G1000 system because it steals away the chance to learn a far more flexible set of skills and engenders dependency on the Garmin automation.

In addition, I would be remiss not to mention the G1000 is the worst possible system to use for IFR currency training, because there is so little mental work to be done using it. Situational awareness gets swapped for a moving map display, eye hand motor skills go completely on the shelf, and the ability to use older airplanes goes completely out of range. Garmin now has an autopilot (GF700) that even accepts vertical programming which removes even that problem from the table. Anyone using the G1000 panel for IFR currency should be issued a friendly warning they had better stick to the Garmin system because if they jump back to into steam without a refresher they will likely make an untimely rendezvous with a hillside.

Ewfflyer

I'm in the same love/hate boat on the G1000. When I'm flying, I love it. I have access to tons of information in regards to aircraft performance, but all the extras that come with it too! There is never any excuse for me to not know my destination weather, storm positions, fuel options/range/endurance, at any given moment along the flight.

I hate it when folks use it as a crutch. Excellent AP attached to it, it does damn near everything but land. Although, I usually can bust these folks because most of them fail to program the system correctly(most is switching the AP from NAV to APR, just because you loaded the APR in the GPS, doesn't mean the AP knows that!!!!!). I see a degredation of hand-flying skills due to the automation and dependency on the AP.

rickair7777

Interestingly enough...

I'm working through my backlog of Aviation Week, and March 15 issue has an article about an NSTB study which looked at TAA safety. This is the first major study of it's kind since TAA's are fairly new.

For light piston airplanes, the TAA's have over DOUBLE the fatal accident rate compared to steam gauges. (1.03 vs 0.45 per 100,000 hours).

I suspect some of that has to do with mission and demographics...on average TAA's are flown by older (wealthier) folks who may come to aviation later in life (old dogs, new tricks and all that). More capable airplanes flown by older pilots tend to fly longer missions with more opportunities to encounter weather and more get-there-itis.

The article focuses on training and the challenge of managing TAA systems. It's easy for two professional pilots to manage TAA but I'm not sold on it being easier on a single private pilot.

NoyGonnaDoIt

I'm not that convinced on the demographic piece (although obviouslym wealthier folks can afford things less wealth can't).

But I think you're spot on on the mission piece. There has been a lot of speculation (I don't think anyone has done a breakdown on the data sufficient to do more than speculate at this point) that a major reason for the results is that the greater capabilities also mean more pushing of limits. The amount of available information, especially with respect to weather, can lead to a level of overconfidence in what one is willing to fly in.

For example, one might not be willing to fly into an area of embedded thunderstorms, but one might if there's a pretty display in front of them that lets them think they know exactly where they are to cirumnavigate.

sinkrate3278

A study done by the NTSB and FAA show that glass cockpits in GA really aren't any safer than their steam gauge predecessors.

Nothing beats a well trained guy or gal at the controls!

SB-10-07

Cubdriver

Wow, that was interesting. I am not sure I agree with the NTSB's recommendations on how to remedy the problem though. They addressed one side of the issue quite nicely, that of adding more training requirements for glass panel systems, but it is at the expense of round gauge training on just about every level. That is the larger picture that I think needs to be addressed and almost certainly will come back to bite us in the form of higher crash rates for round-gauge aircraft. In other words, the additional training on glass may result in even less training for dials and the stage is set for an even broader safety gap.

I am also surprised about the poorer safety data for glass, that is a big letdown. I hope additional studies isolates the problem to a demographic or some other issue, because that's bad news. On the other hand, I suspect if they go through with extra training for glass cockpits it will come at the expense of round gauge skills and eventually result in type ratings for GA airplanes like in India. Over there you have to get a type for each and every airplane and that's all you are approved to fly. We don't want to see that in an industry that is already buckling under the high cost of airplane ownership.