The Role of Situation Assessment and Flight Experience in Pilots' Decisions to Continue Visual Flight Rules Flight into Adverse Weather

TLDR

VFR flight into IMC poses a major safety hazard in general aviation. The study examined pilots’ decisions to continue or divert from a VFR flight into IMC during a dynamic cross‑country simulation, with the aim of informing interventions that improve weather evaluation skills and address risk‑taking attitudes. The authors used a dynamic cross‑country flight simulation in which pilots encountered IMC either early or late, recording the time and distance flown into adverse weather before diverting. Pilots who encountered deteriorating weather earlier flew longer into the weather before diverting and had more optimistic weather estimates, and both time and distance into weather before diverting were negatively correlated with prior flight experience, indicating that poor situation assessment and experience, rather than risk‑taking motivation, underlie VFR flight into IMC.

Abstract

Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) is a major safety hazard in general aviation. In this study we examined pilots' decisions to continue or divert from a VFR flight into IMC during a dynamic simulation of a cross-country flight. Pilots encountered IMC either early or later into the flight, and the amount of time and distance pilots flew into the adverse weather prior to diverting was recorded. Results revealed that pilots who encountered the deteriorating weather earlier in the flight flew longer into the weather prior to diverting and had more optimistic estimates of weather conditions than did pilots who encountered the deteriorating weather later in the flight. Both the time and distance traveled into the weather prior to diverting were negatively correlated with pilots' previous flight experience. These findings suggest that VFR flight into IMC may be attributable, at least in part, to poor situation assessment and experience rather than to motivational judgment that induces risk-taking behavior as more time and effort are invested in a flight. Actual or potential applications of this research include the design of interventions that focus on improving weather evaluation skills in addition to addressing risk-taking attitudes.