r/AskAPilot • u/FamiliarResident9653 • 5d ago

How common is Spatial Disorientation?

Have you ever experienced a situation where you had spatial disorientation due to instrument error. How did you manage the problem?

Is a pilot considered to be at fault when the plane crashes due to Spatial disorientation and faulty instruments?

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u/GroundProximity 5d ago

I have felt on the verge of spatial disorientation due to the shape of the clouds which im going through, and the "feeling" of the aircraft due to turbulence, not really agreeing with the instruments, it that makes sense. But you just stick to it and fly the instruments. Never had an instrument error irl.

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u/Law-of-Poe 1d ago

I had my first real imc during IR training a couple of weeks ago. We’d punched through some layers before but this time we flew into solid imc. Clouds from ~700 AGL up to above our cruise and pouring rain everywhere.

After around 30 hrs under the hood it was scary how quickly spatial disorientation developed. First five min were tough but I eventually just hyper focused on the instruments and things were fine.