This suggests a lot of the problem is poor familiarity with the systems.
That would be my first guess. When my school tried to to explain people that glass familiarization is required before flying G1000 equipped C172 they were accused by prospects interested in renting aircraft for pushing people to unnecessary spend money for training. You know that attitude “I know how to fly planes, don’t try to sell me these new stuff, it’s all same sh.t”
Actually it seems there is almost no statistically significant difference other than collision with terrain. The IR vs no IR difference was significant.
Without exposure data there’s not much to take away, is there? So the proportion of fatal accidents involving CFIT is higher for instrument rated pilots. And the proportion of instrument pilots who fly well equipped glass cockpit aircraft is higher than non-instrument rated pilots. Therefore glass will figure in a disproportionately high fraction of CFIT.
Glass is utterly different than round gauges.
Given the sophistication and high-level of situational awareness with glass it must be noted none of the capability can be achieved WITHOUT training and experience.
Sadly basic training is not required for someone to rent a plane with glass and ‘assume’ they can simply takeoff and fly around. Blaming the panel is nonsense of course. Like everything in aviation familiarity and adeptness are required even for the most mundane aspects of flight.
For example, would a round gauge guy know where to immediately look on a G1000 for terrain profile? Or know how to set the GFC700 autopilot with precision without experience and training? No. And when it comes to CFIT knowing how to read, interpret, find and select these things quickly are critical in the mountains.
Would it still be the case today that loads of people in the USA are buying a glass cockpit plane without exposure to it during training?
When I did my FAA IR in Arizona 10 years ago that was clearly still the case, but how about today?
Peter wrote:
buying a glass cockpit plane without exposure to it during training
I began training in a Zodiak with round gauges. I bought the FD CT and finished my PPL training with CFII and did the checkride with glass (this also included 10 hours of factory transition training provided by FD with a CFII).
The transition to the Cirrus SR22T with perspective was straightforward given the experience I have had in the Dynon equipped FD. Cirrus says new owners who have no glass experience are at a much greater disadvantage. It is a big reason Cirrus includes in the purchase of a new aircraft three days of factory certified training including the use of customized training simulators at all of their training schools.
There are a lot of glass cockpit trainers in the US now. A lot of people see them (and indeed ask for them) during training.
Sadly, XPLANE does not have the G1000….they have been promising it for a long time but the only G1000 simulator you can run on a PC right now is from Garmin and it’s for a fee. Garmin also last tested it on XP….we are up to Win10 now…They are behind on that too.
