#279 - Pilot Has Less Than 3 Minutes To Live - Inadvertent IMC

For those of you that don't know what flying into the SUP is or inadvertent imc, we're going to show you courtesy of this video. I'm going to put the link down below for the creator because I really appreciate this video. You're going to see what it looks like and this is what you need to be prepared for. This pilot makes a good decision to turn around, gets back to the airport safely. Unfortunately, many times this doesn't happen and people lose their lives from flying into the soup. Here it comes. Look how quickly. Boom. Just like that, you're inadvertent and you can't see. There's a shot from the cockpit and you go from being able to see to boom. Visibility gone. This is day 279. Coffee with Kenny. I'm Kenny Keller, the creator of Helicopter Online Ground School and I'm gonna share with you a presentation today from two aviation experts and they're going to tell you about what is double imc Flying into the soup, why it happens, how fast you have to be able to react, how you must be prepared or you're going to lose your life. And we're going to show you this video from AOPA on 178 seconds to live. If you go inadvertent IMC and you're not prepared, but that's for fixed wing helicopters are inherently unstable. So for helicopters it's probably going to happen to you lot faster. So I'm purposely doing this coffee with Kenny on a Sunday because you should have time to relax, kick back. It's about a 45 minute presentation, but I'm telling you, you are going to learn a lot about Double imc. What it is, how to avoid it, and what to do in the event that this horrible killer happens to you. If you don't have time today, I highly encourage you to put a like on it, save it and come back and view this presentation later. This was originally aired as an FAA webinar that we did and put out to basically to the world. And today I want to share it with you. And it starts off with Rex Alexander, then goes to Louis Vondy. Both these guys have around 40 years aviation experience apiece and who I consider experts in the field. So kick back, check out this presentation and please watch it in its entirety.

Well folks, welcome back to another edition of Fast Team webinar. What we are presenting today, we hope you will really enjoy. We have collaborated once again between Online ground School and 5 Alpha to present something that we think you will enjoy. But Also hopefully will provide you with some valuable information to keep you safe in the future. What we're talking about is inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions, double imc. So what is double imc? It's basically a VFR pilot flying into IMC conditions unprepared and then having the issue with trying to recover the aircraft. When we talk about double imc, you'll hear it referred to as that. One of the new terms you'll hear out there is unintentional flight into IMC conditions. So when you look at what IMC is, Instrument meteorological Conditions, the opposite of that is what we call VMC Visual Meteorological conditions. The average pilot out there flying today, helicopter and fixed wing is what we refer to as a VFR pilot. Visual Flight rules. This is directed not only at VFR pilots, but also IFR pilots, Instrument flight rule pilots, people who have the certificate to fly in the clouds in IMC conditions today is what we're looking at specifically is inadvertent imc, one of the biggest killers in the helicopter and fixed wing world today. When we look at the statistics on this, it's not something new. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots association actually did a study as far back as 1954 in conjunction with the University of Illinois. They took 20 subjects. VFR pilots ran them through a test in IMC conditions, anywhere from 20 seconds to 400 plus seconds. All of them lost control. The average was 178 seconds. From that fast forward to a couple years ago, they actually produced a video. The video link is here below the screen. It's on YouTube. The AOPA had done a great job of putting this video together and it's a very informative video in that it shows pilots that if you do go IMC and you're unprepared and you haven't had any training in preparation for going imc, your chance of survival is very, very low. At this point. We're going to go ahead and show you that video to give you a flavor for what that looks like, feels like and sounds like it'll make the hair on the back of your neck stand up as a pilot. So we're going to break and watch this video from aopa. They did a fantastic job of this and it's a very informative, very short video. So let's go ahead, shoot to that clip.

Right now the sky is overcast and the visibility poor. That reported five mile visibility looks more like two. And you can't judge the height of the overcast. Your altimeter Sundays you're at 1500ft. But your chart tells you there's terrain in the area as high as 1200ft. Still. You've flown through weather like this before, so you press on. You find yourself easing back slightly on the controls to give yourself more clearance. Then, with no warning, you're in the soup. You peer so hard into the mist that your eyes hurt. You swallow, only to find your mouth dry. Somewhere a voice is saying you should have turned back. You now have 178 seconds to live. You push the rudder and add a little pressure on the controls to stop the turn. But this feels unnatural. And you return the controls to their original position. This feels better. But now your compass is turning a little faster and your airspeed is increasing. You scan the panel for help, but you don't find any. It doesn't make any sense. You're sure you'll break out in a few minutes, but you don't have a few minutes. You now have 100 seconds to live. You glance at your altimeter and are shocked to see it unwinding. You're already down to 1200ft. Instinctively, you pull back on the controls, but the altimeter still unwinds. The tach is in the red, and the airspeed's almost there, too. You now have 45 seconds to live. Now you're sweating and shaking. There must be something wrong with the controls. Pulling back only moves the airspeed deeper into the red. You can hear the wind tearing at the airplane. You have 10 seconds to live. Then you see the ground. The trees rush up at you. You can see the horizon. If you turn your head far enough, but it's at a strange angle, you open your mouth to scream.

So in that video, what we're looking at is basically right here. You have less than three minutes. If you're not prepared that you could possibly have a loss of control situation. Now, this is in an airplane. When we talk helicopter, it's a different situation. Helicopters are less stable. They require more attention from the pilot to maintain stability. As an instructor in the military, we take individuals out. We do what we call unusual attitude recovery. During that, we'd also take helicopter pilots, put them in a very controlled situation, a fixed altitude, a fixed heading and a fixed power setting. Then we'd have them close their eyes. During that time, we'd just tell them, maintain. Don't do anything different. Don't adjust anything. Just keep a level attitude and do not climb, do not descend, do not turn. My personal experience, I never had a pilot last more than 45 seconds before they would start to turn, then it would exasperate and it was kind of like a pendulum effect. It'd get worse, worse, and then finally you'd have them recover. I've never had any student who ever made it past that. Because we rely so much on our visual indicators for flying the aircraft. What we have to do in a situation when we go inadvertent IMC is we have to trust instruments and we have to fess up to ourselves. We're inadvertent because you only have a few seconds. If you don't take immediate actions from the second you go inadvertent, you're behind the power curve. Now, further on studies, we looked at inadvertent imc. The US Helicopter Safety Team, which is an organization I am a volunteer with, did some research on this and they looked at accidents that the 2011 NTSB had reviewed. And out of those 52 inadvertent IMC accidents, 86% were fatal. Think about that for a second. 86% fatal accident rate in an inverted IMC. That basically gives you a 14% survivability rate if you go IMC and you're not prepared, you not been trained and you're not ready for it. The key is preparedness. The key is training. So when we get into the accident rate, the USHST dug a little deeper and they looked at accidents from 2009 to 2013. There's 104 fatals. The three most common fatal occurrences were loss of control or what we'll refer to as loc. Loss of control as it says here. Loss of aircraft control while or deviation from intended flight path, intended flight, loss of control in flight. Extreme manifestation of a deviation generally caused by unintended flight into instrument meteorological conditions. What we're talking about today. So loss of control is manifested a lot of times by inadvertent imc. Now the other one we talk about is low altitude operations. Collision of near collision with obstacles, terrain while intentionally operating near the surface. When you go imc, the ground is not your friend. That's the one thing you want to get away from because you can't see it. And when you do see it, it's usually too late and you're out of control in a loss of control situation. So these represent 52 accidents, all fatal, 104 fatalities. That is a significant amount. So remember, if you're not prepared, you haven't had the training, you have a 14% chance of actually surviving unintentional flight into instrument meteorological conditions. That is what today is all about. So without any further ado, I'd like to introduce our speaker today. Louis Fondi is going to join us and give you a very in depth discussion on invert, IMC prevention and also education. Lewis is a CFI Double I ATP Fixed wing Rotary wing pilot and has been in the industry for quite a while and specializes in instrument operations and does a lot of education within the industry in that specific field. Louis, please come on up and join us and we'll introduce you and get moving on to the series content. Louis, thank you very much for coming. Really appreciate you being here.

Thanks Rex.

All right, thank you.

Thanks again Rex. I'm bringing you this presentation Having been a training captain and a Czech airman in the EMS industry For the last 26 years, currently I am the the lead single pilot IFR ground School Instructor and an IFR instructor and Czech airman in the EC135 and AS365 for air methods Corporation. I have titled my presentation the Ins and Outs of IMC and when we think of Double imc, let's go back to that premise that Rex just presented. AOPA published several years ago that nearly half of all weather related accidents happen as a result of continued flight VFR into IMC conditions and sadly the majority of those accidents are fatal. So considering those statistics which Rex presented, I would like to take three flights with which I am familiar that we might learn something about surviving the aspect of encountering double IMC. The first flight occurred on October 19, 1984. The pilot was to fly from Laramie, Wyoming to Denver, Colorado to pick up the owner of the aircraft. This flight was to be conducted night VMC and in the flight the pilot who was me encountered lowering ceilings and lowering visibilities approximately 35 miles south of Laramie. At that point I made the decision to do a 180 degree turn to the left flying out of the lowering conditions, return back to Laramie, put the airplane away and drive home and go to bed. My Qualifications at the time I was a commercial rated pilot in airplanes and helicopters. A CFI again both in airplanes and helicopters. Total flight time of just under 300 hours, 53 of which were instruments entirely hood and I had a whopping 16 hours of nighttime experience. So considering my qualifications, how did these help contribute to the decision to turn around? There are four elements in my decision making process. First of all, what were my priorities? My main priority was that of self preservation. Secondly, I needed to be able to eliminate any pressures to conduct this flight of which there were pressures that day, my boss had dropped this flight into my lap late in the day after firing my mentor who was originally going to do this flight. So he had an expectation that I would do and complete this flight. In order to conduct this flight, I had to plan this flight. Well, in that flight planning process, the weather was supposed to be VMC for the flight down and the flight back. But even in the latter aspects of the evening, the flight conditions were supposed to deteriorate. So I had that in mind and finally I had to realize how prepared I was to conduct this flight. How much nighttime experience did I have? Was I comfortable to go IFR should that occur? On the very same night, about 40 miles to the east of Laramie, Wyoming, another Mooney was piloted by a non instrument rated pilot. The plan for this pilot was to fly from Cheyenne, Wyoming up to Casper, about 128 miles to the northwest. This pilot took off in light snow and ended up crashing in a field approximately five miles north of Cheyenne. NTSB noted that there were no anomalies to the aircraft until it impacted the ground. The conditions in Cheyenne at the time, it was night, it was dark, visibility was 4 miles, ceiling was obscured at 400ft. Temperature was minus 2 with a dew point of minus 5. But that's another story for another time. The pilot departed Cheyenne on a VFR IFR flight plan. And again, as he took off under a special VFR clearance, that flight terminated five miles north of the airport. His pilot qualifications included almost 1300 hours as pilot in command. He had 203 hours in the Mooney 201, which happened to be the same number of hours that he had flown in the last 30 days. He'd flown almost 360 hours in the last three months and 10 in the last 24 hours. So considering his qualifications, what might we think contributed to his decisions? We go back to those four P's again, what were his priorities? It's really unknown to us, but I would think that self preservation was not one of his priorities. And it seemed that with all the flying he had been doing in the last 24 hours, even he had places to go and people to see. In regard to pressures, again, we really don't know what was pressuring him to fly or not. But again, it would seem that he had a purpose, he had something motivating him to take this flight this night into IMC conditions. In regard to his planning, I would say that at best he was arrogant and at worst he was negligent. And was he prepared to handle double imc? It's my guess that he had spent so much time in the saddle that he was very comfortable flying this aircraft and probably made the assumption that he could handle anything that nature would throw at him. So considering these two scenarios, how do you think. Let's look at your priorities. Are your priorities consistent or do they vary from day to day, from condition to condition? Have you ever taken a flight where you knew that you shouldn't take this flight? What pressures did you succumb to as far as planning your flight? Do you adequately plan your flights or are you the type of pilot who goes out and kicks the tire and lights the fire? As we consider these four P's, let's take them into consideration as far as getting into double imc, or even better yet, avoiding double IMC altogether. You might think, how does a pilot like me get into this predicament? I'd like to ask you a question. How many of you have ever thought, this will never happen to me? Well, I'd like to present you with this. It is my assumption, and I'm sure that I'm right, that all those pilots that are in the statistics board books that Rex pointed out and this pilot that I just talked about probably thought that same thought. As you can see from the previous examples, the ends of double IMC can be briefly summed up as the pilot's priorities, pressures, planning, and preparedness. So what are these possible ends? You're probably thinking to yourself, anybody can get into double imc. I'm really more interested of how to get out. But that being the case, it does take a process to get into double imc. So let's look at these four P's in that regard. If you have wrong priorities, such as you have a time constraint or maybe you have an issue with ego, you might want to be impressing yourself, demonstrating to yourself that you are a great pilot and you can go ahead and fly into any conditions that nature throws at you. Or you might want to be impressing others. You can never feel obligated to meet the needs of your passengers, so you have to eliminate your pressures in that regard. But even more commonly, do you pressure yourself to go out and get the job done? How about pre flight planning? Do you consider the process that you learned in your initial training as cumbersome or maybe unnecessary? Or as you look at the weather, do you think you know more about the weather than the forecasters at the nws? And because of that, are you seeing yourself beginning to fly into marginal weather conditions? And as you fly into these marginal conditions, Are you becoming more comfortable? I would like to tell you this. If you're getting comfortable flying in marginal weather conditions, then you are taking the garden path to enter doumc. In regard to preparedness, do you have a lack of preparedness or an inappropriate level of experience, which could be maybe you think too highly of yourself. Are you overconfident in your abilities? Have you ever told yourself, I'm never going to do that again, but in the future you find yourself in a similar situation? So we've looked at how not to think in regard to these four Ps, what should be our focus in regard to these four Ps? In regard to priorities, you must have the priorities of professionalism and safety ahead of everything else. And this includes that time that you're planning the flight and during the execution phase of the flight as well. Your decision to fly has to be solely based on thorough planning and accurate observation as you're conducting the flight. And when you plan, the first thing to consider is you have to have a plan. And once you plan the flight, you must fly that plan. Part of the process of planning is to include what do I need to do should I encounter abnormal contingencies, for example, double imc. And when you have a good plan, it gives you a solid foundation from which you can deviate, should that become necessary. How about preparation? When was the last time that you practiced unusual attitude recoveries with an instructor? By the way, And as I previously noted, don't let your perception of self make you write a check that you can't cash. Know your limitations. So what I've really pointed out to looking at the four P's initially is that of avoiding double IMC altogether. But what if double IMC becomes a reality? What if the unimaginable happens and you're up to your eyeballs in clouds? Well, we can't do like the turtle in the old cartoon and say, help me, Mr. Wizard. So now that you're in double IMC, how are we going to get out of double IMC? First of all, we have to have those right priorities. You have to understand you must aviate first, then navigate, then communicate. You also have to understand there will be pressures associated with the fact that you are in the clouds. Unplanned, you will experience pressures, mentally and physically, that you have to overcome. Believe it or not, planning is going to give you a point from which to start. For example, if you planned, as I previously mentioned, for abnormal contingencies, you already have an idea what you're going to do. And how about that preparedness aspect? You need to really get frequent and perfect preparation. Or we might even think of it as frequent and perfect practice. Vince Lombardi once said, practice does not make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect. Now let's Fast forward to August 7, 1998. This particular flight once again involves me. I was an EMS pilot in Duluth, Minnesota, flying in a dual pilot IFR operation. On this particular day, the second pilot was unavailable. So I am by myself. I'm actually giving you two scenarios for the price of one. At this point early in the day, I had a request to fly from Duluth, Minnesota to Ironwood, Michigan. As I was about halfway to Ironwood, I encountered low ceilings and low visibilities. And I made the determination, as I did in my first example, to do a 180 degree turn and fly back to base later that day. On a subsequent request, the crew and I were requested to go from Duluth, Minnesota up to Grand Marais. But as Paul Harvey would say. And now the rest of the story. Shortly after I took off from Grand Marais to return to Duluth, I encountered lowering ceilings and visibilities. As I got abreast of this high ground, visibility ahead of me was deteriorating. I was experiencing flat light as I looked across Lake Superior and it appeared that the ceilings were getting lower as the winds were blowing the cloud deck over the mountains. After making those observations, I made the determination that there was no good place to land. Turning around created some risk because of the high ground to my right and the flat light to my left. So I made the conscious decision at that point to control the aircraft, climb into IMC and contact ATC and let them know what I just did. My qualifications at this time, I was now an ATP helicopter pilot, commercially rated in airplanes, both single and multi engine. I was also a CFI and double I in airplanes and helicopters. I had a total flight time of close to 4,200 hours, 3,324 of which were instrument, a combination of actual instrument and hood. And Finally, I include 513 hours of nighttime experience. Because flying in northern Minnesota, in the rural areas that we experienced much of that time at night, we did not have a visual horizon, so we were experiencing imc. So what contributed to my decision? You guessed it. It's those same four Ps priorities, pressures, planning and preparedness. My first priority is to maintain aircraft control. My second priority is that I would make decisions based on the fact that I wanted to come back and fly this same mission again tomorrow. Also, it has become my mantra that I will never take a flight that I won't be comfortable flying my own family with, let alone a medical crew and a patient. How about pressures? Were there any pressures for me to fly? Really, there wasn't. I had eliminated those. Even at the point of taking off from Grand Marais, had the visibility not been acceptable for my departure? I knew that the patient was much better off in the facility than to maybe land on a highway and have to wait for an ambulance. And again, I was comfortable enough that I would do this flight with my family on board if they were there. How had I planned for this event? I had done thorough pre flight checks regarding weather on both of these flights before I took off on the second. The flight visibility in Duluth was vmc. It was turning into a beautiful day. Weather forecast en route to Grand Marais indicated that the weather wasn't quite as good, but it was well within the VMC realm. How had I planned for this flight? First of all, the weather on the first flight that I did to Ironwood appeared that I would be able to have a successful completion of that flight that not having happened. As the day progressed, weather in Duluth improved to where it was clear blue in 22. But the weather up along the North Shore was not quite as good, but still within the realm of vmc. Additionally, I had been planning for years what I would do if I got into the predicament of douimc. As far as preparation goes, I had been the training captain and Czech airman for this company for the past seven years. I was training nine pilots in this organization and one of the tasks that I trained regularly was that of unusual attitude recovery. And in that time I had seen pilots make excellent recoveries. And I'd also seen pilots that made less than stellar recoveries. And having made these observations, I was able to store them in my personal database and in a sense, save them for a rainy day just like today. As we look at this, I have philosophically given you good information in regard to double imc. First off, avoid it whenever possible. Secondly, if you're encountering lowering conditions, stop short, turn around, terminate the flight. But if you find yourself painted into that corner of imc, ensure that you are proficient enough to have a successful outcome should you encounter that condition. So now let's go from the philosophy to the toolbox. Are there any tools that you can use to help you get out of doumc? First of all, I want you to realize that over the years the methodology of recovering from double IMC has changed. In the early 80s, the common recovery for exiting Douimc was to conduct a 180 degree turn out of the deteriorating weather. In fact, this was the method I used in my first scenario and in the first half of my second scenario. But the current conventional wisdom requires a three tier climb. Call and confess. The association of Air Medical Services AMS several years ago produced a checklist that many EMS operators utilize and that includes a long list. First of all, maintain aircraft stability by keeping it level, turning only to avoid known obstacles, adjusting your collective to have climb power airspeed for best rate of climb, engage the autopilot. If you have one, climb to a minimum safe altitude, contact atc, let them know that you are in an emergency condition. And finally, request vectors to VMC or the nearest approach. I want to focus on the first four aspects of that previous slide and they are really the climb aspect of the three Cs that I pointed out earlier. I remember this as the acronym ahpa, American Helicopter Pilot Association. But we're going to change that just a little bit for our purpose here. The A is attitude, level H heading, maintain the heading, only changing that to avoid known obstacles. Power to climb, airspeed to climb. But let's think this through. If we, as good helicopter pilots, react as we have been taught to react in a rather rapid manner during an emergency situation, might there be any negative connotations? So let's first of all consider helicopter aerodynamics. Can the result of an appropriate control input lead to an aerodynamic resultant of an unusual attitude? You're probably thinking to yourself, well, since Lewis is asking this question, the answer must be yes, but how can that be? With that in mind, it's time to take a little quiz. Let's brush the cobwebs out of the mind and maybe brush a little of that rust off in these two questions. First, what happens to the helicopter about the lateral axis if the pilot makes a rapid increase on the collective to initiate a climb? Is it A, there will be no pitch change in the attitude of the aircraft, B the nose of the aircraft will pitch up, C the nose of the aircraft will pitch down, or D all of the above? You're correct. The answer is B, the nose of the aircraft will pitch up. Question two, how will the helicopter respond if you make a rapid movement laterally with the cyclic while simultaneously rapidly increasing the collective? Will that lateral cyclic movement A balance the rapid increase of collective thus ensuring a level attitude? B overcompensate for the rapid increase of collective causing the aircraft to pitch down and bank in the opposite direction direction C Magnify the pitch up response, which may put the aircraft into a decelerating steep bank in the direction of application, or D cause an uncontrollable yaw in the direction of the cyclic application. The answer C, it will magnify the pitching up response, thus decelerating the aircraft and possibly causing a steep bank in the in the direction of lateral application. So as this is occurring, what about you, the pilot? I want you to understand that there is a neurological response that wherever your eyes look, your head, shoulder, arms and hands are going to follow. So as you're looking for VMC conditions, as you're getting into the lowering visibilities, you're going to look maybe to the left. As you look to the left, you're going to drop your left shoulder, you're going to start a descent. When you look back to the right, you're probably going to increase the collective, start a bank to the right, maybe even increase the collective so that you're climbing just a little bit. As this happens, you're going to find yourself in the clouds. At that time, you'll move your head quickly to the attitude indicator. And if you think about this, might this tumble your internal gyros? Absolutely. Absolutely. So what type of illusion are you experiencing? It doesn't matter. Who cares? When we overanalyze things trying to answer questions like these, we're going to lose everything in double jeopardy in just under three minutes. So when this happens, we have to remain calm, cool and collected when we're making control inputs. But let's not complicate this process too much. Bruce Webb, the former chief pilot of Airbus helicopters, took these ideas of cool, calm and collected and put it into one term, the sea of composure. And here's a tool that will help you maintain your composition. When you come down to your attitude indicator, I want you to consider that the 5 degree nose up and the 5 degrees nose down attitude markings are your Pong paddles. The ball of the nose of the aircraft is your pong ball. I realize that I am dating myself, but I'm sure that you have all seen the retro game of pong. The idea is this. You will have to be very slow and meticulous in making pitches with the cyclic up or down. And when that ball touches one of these paddles, you have to audibly hear in your head the click or the clack so that you make a correction in the opposite direction. If you do this, you will be only changing your pitch no more than plus or minus 3 degrees. I want you to realize this Unless you are in a position to make the choice to enter double imc, as I did in my final example, more than likely you're going to suffer some degree of vestibular illusion and you're going to start making those over controlling aspects with your control inputs. Remember, maintain composure. If you do go inadvertent IMC while you're trying to keep your head on the swivel, looking around for VMC conditions, you have to come back and think composure. So perform those three Cs of climb, call and confess. But always preface those three Cs with the fourth of composure. Some of you might be in a position where you're flying helicopters that have a simple or maybe even a more complex autopilot and you might think to yourself, ah, since I'm flying this aircraft with an autopilot, I can always use that to rescue me. I recently read an advertisement in one of the helicopter publications that said this brand new type of autopilot is going to be the best thing that you could ever have should you encounter double imc. But I'm here to tell you this. You must understand the operational limitations of your autopilot. You have airspeed limitations as to when that autopilot can be engaged. If you're too slow and you try to push the button, the autopilot is going to do nothing for you. If you are oscillating such that you are in a rapid descent gaining airspeed, you may have exceeded the maximum airspeed for that autopilot. Or maybe you are within the realm of the airspeeds, the low and the high side, but still in an accelerative attitude when you engage the autopilot, if you exceed that limitation of the high end airspeed, the autopilot will disengage. Therefore, you must be able to recover double IMC solely based on your ability to fly this aircraft. Hands on, the focus thus far has been focused on that first aspect of climb. But we can't forget the aspects of call and confess either. Once you have maintained control of the aircraft, you've climbed to a safe altitude. It is now your obligation and duty to contact approach control and let them know that you are in double IMC conditions. You would state something like Approach control, this is helicopter 12345. I'm imc declaring an emergency. You might wonder, well, why am I declaring an emergency if I've finally gotten to the point where I'm under control and I'm comfortable? Declaring an emergency allows you to utilize FAR91.3P, paragraph B and that is, in an inflight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency. The mere fact that you entered IMC without a flight plan and without a clearance really means that you've already violated regulations. So this will help you in protecting your certificate. It's also going to help the pilots that are flying in your area in that ATC will now clear them out of your way. So let's review those four P's. In regard to priority, you have to exercise the fact that you are the leader that everyone in that helicopter is depending on. You can never let any of the passengers or yourself pressure you into conducting a flight. In regard to planning, you have to plan the flight, fly the plan, and also take into account contingencies. How might I exit an inadvertent IMC condition should I enter it? And finally ensure that you are prepared so as to one, avoid double IMC altogether or to be able to have a successful outcome should you encounter the condition. Let's revisit these three flights. In my two flights, my priorities remained consistent. I was concerned about self and being able to come back tomorrow and fly this flight again should it arise. Secondly, I was able to mitigate any pressures that could be associated with conducting one of these flights. I had planned this flight to include any contingencies of lower visibilities or lowering ceilings. And finally, I understood how prepared I was in both cases. In the first, I understood my lack of experience and I would not let myself get too far into the lower conditions. In the second, I had many more years of experience and understood exactly how I would deal with double IMC should I encounter it. Whereas our second example, we can see that the pilot was not in the position to exercise any sort of good priorities. There were pressures, whether they were internal or external, that made him even possibly avoid planning the flight or being negligent in that flight planning. And finally, he may have thought too highly of himself. He'd been flying that aircraft for over 200 hours and so he felt comfortable possibly in encountering conditions that he was not able to successfully fly from. In conclusion, I want you to realize that no one ever plans to become a statistic of the ntsb. So if we consider this, we should realize that that puts you and me on a level playing field. The only difference is we can utilize these three examples and the ones presented by Rex to stay alive and not become a statistic. So I want you to remember this. First of all, avoid double IMC whenever possible, even in the preflight planning phase. We can avoid that double IMC through good pre flight planning and also assessing our weather accurately as we're on a flight. And remember, if you've painted yourself into a corner regarding these deteriorating conditions, make the choice to keep the aircraft under control. If you truly enter IMC inadvertently, remember this composure is key to your survival. Regardless of how you get into the aimc, maintain composure, climb considering attitude, heading, power and airspeed, and finally, call ATC and confess what you've done. I'd like to thank you for attending our douimc webinar. If you have any questions, you can contact me@lewiscoptervectors.com or any of us here at Helicopter Online Ground Schools. Thank you.

All right, I know that was a really long presentation. That's some life saving material there. And in the Midwest it's that time of the year where we have to really start thinking about this. It can happen any time of the year. But I thought this would be a great day to do it on a Sunday. We're into fall. This is just hands down good information. So put your comments down below. Go to helicopterground.com below if you'd like to check out any of our courses, private, commercial, CFI and instrument, Please subscribe and click the bell so you'll be notified of our daily video and we'll see you in day 280.

Peace out. It.