» By Bob Schmelzer PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE FIZER EXIT STRATEGY IMC AHEAD? FOUR STEPS TO GET YOU IN THE CLEAR One person a week. That’s how many people, on average, don’t make it home from a flight because they flew VFR into instrument conditions. Over the past 10 years, 311 accidents can be categorized as VFR into IMC, an event that claims lives 86 percent of the time. The worst part? Most of these accidents were avoidable. How—why do these tragic accidents occur? After all, every private pilot applicant is required to receive at least three hours of flight training under simulated or actual instrument conditions before their checkride. But these three hours of training are merely a very short introduction to the demanding and complex procedural and mental requirements of conducting a flight in IMC. While seldom mentioned during initial flight training, the real purpose of this training is to prepare the pilot to survive an accidental IMC encounter, should they ever find themselves in that predicament. Statistics prove that surviving an accidental IMC encounter demands much more than just a basic ability to fly the steady heading and altitude that was required during the checkride. Why would a pilot on a visual flight rules (VFR) flight allow an airplane to enter IMC in the first place? Good question. According to accident analysis data taken from the Air Safety Institute’s Nall Report, the most common type of weather-related— APRIL 2011 FLIGHT TRAINING / 33