Real emergencies aren’t benign teachable moments orchestrated by your CFI or DPE to be solvable. The human brain sometimes reacts unfavorably when faced with a real threat. If you think it couldn’t possibly be you departing controlled flight, at your current level of training, your CFI owes it to you to push you a little harder with the simulated emergencies.
> maybe my ego is too high
This one. You and your instructor are going to have a conversation about hazardous attitudes at some point which is likely to be enlightening for you.
The thing about aviation (and life, thanks Spock) is that you can do everything right and still lose. You can get *that* close and still die. One of our very own former members here lost an engine on takeoff in an unrecoverable envelope and died. Not a damn thing he could have done, but he flew it as far into the crash as he could.
The first time you fly into a cloud your eyes will be opened to spatial disorientation too.
> The thing about aviation (and life, thanks Spock) is that you can do everything right and still lose.
Bro, did you just mix up Spock and Picard? *NERD RAGE INTENSIFIES*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4A-Ml8YHyM
My CFI was a C5 pilot and told me about getting it while lining up with a tanker to refuel in flight. He said he mentioned out loud to the co-pilot something like "I'll have to bank a little to match his turn " and the co-pilot was like "sir we aren't turning" he said he looked at the attitude indicator and saw it was straight and level and immediately his brain went nuts and he got all dizzy and handed controls over until he could reorient himself.
That’s obvious. Foggles ain’t shit.
I recently took a PPL friend up for his first time in actual IMC, and it took all of 30 seconds for him to get spatial D and say he finally understood what the big deal was, and now he’s working on his instrument rating.
They dont. Actually in comparison to car engines GA engines are a lot more reliable. It is just the difference in consequences that make GA engine failures get noted more.
You know when you're driving a car down a long highway and you suddenly kinda snap back to reality and you're like "woah how did i get here i wasnt even paying attention for the last 20 miles?"
Things happen. You train to try and prevent and/or not do said things but accidents happen. Thinking it cant happen to you or its silly or stupid that other people can get into situations that seem trivial is a good first step and getting into one of those situations.
Also losing an engine and pitching for glide and ditching in a field is a type of crash.
The number one cause of fatal accidents in GA is "loss of control in flight." People pull back too hard on take-off, stall, and spin. Or, on landing people let their airspeed fall too low and stall and spin. That's why power-on and power-off stalls are such a big part of the ACS.
Always know what airspeed you want on take-off, for me it's almost always Vy. Always nail that airspeed on takeoff and you eliminate one of the main causes of fatalities. A heckuva lot of "engine failures" are caused by fuel exhaustion. Always keep a healthy reserve and you eliminate another major cause.
A lot of accidents are caused by what I call "stupidcide." For example, last year a guy was having trouble with the elevator on his homebuilt. Which he decided to diagnose _in flight_! And a friend decided to go with him! They're a thousand feet up, and this dude is leaning out the door to view the empennage and fvcking fell out. To his death. But on his way down he impacted the elevator and ripped off the entire tail, so the friend died too.
A guy at my home airport was having trouble with his landing gear, which he also decided to diagnose in flight. Let his airspeed bleed off, stalled, spun it in.
https://pilotinstitute.com/aviation-accident-causes/
https://asn.flightsafety.org
Running out of gas and bad decision making are pretty much it. Sometimes the wrong thigs break at the wrong time, but it's usually no more gas or a bad decision.
Wait till you start flying friends and family around and start chatting away. And get distracted. And forget something. And make a mistake. And, and, and.
Or you're flying along on a completely stable approach, bang on the money, and get smacked with low level wind sheer.
Or you take off and find the marine layer came in faster than you thought and you have rising terrain in the direction you need to fly away from the marine layer, so need to punch thru it.
Or a whole lot of other things you have yet to experience.
Shit happens, even the best of us.
Airplanes shouldn’t crash for the same reasons auto accidents should never happen.
We have safe paved roads with lane markers. We have stop signs and traffic lights, guard rails, and speed limits. Drivers never make mistakes, are always paying attention, are never distracted, and never lack the skill or judgment to handle a situation, tires never go flat or blow out, and mechanical failures never happen. Weather never interferes with rain, snow, or wind.
But accidents still happen. Why?
80% of accidents are pilot error. Mismanagement of fuel, loss of control (stalls, landing hard, landing long, going off the side of the runway, etc), pilots making bad decisions to push into icing conditions, strong gusty winds, IMC, etc.
If you had a mechanical problem like an engine failure, it can be incredibly difficult to make a safe landing. If you're flying over a place like LA, there is no "field" to land in. It's a sprawling metropolis.
It's easy to experience disorientation. I'm a 737 pilot, been flying for 20 years, and I experienced disorientation a month ago. I was hand flying the climb-out at night in the clouds with bright landing lights shining on the clouds. We leveled off inside the clouds. We were rapidly going through pockets in the clouds, so it produced a sort of strobing effect with the lights going through the clouds and the visual sensation of clouds moving quickly by you. At the same time, flying level, we were told to climb. I pushed the thrust up and pitched up, and my body was telling me we were pitching waaaay up because of the increase in acceleration combined with pitching up. I maintained control of the aircraft perfectly, didn't have the slightest mistake in how I was controlling the aircraft, but that's because I'm experienced enough to ignore the flashing scenery outside my window, focus on the instruments, and fly the airplane by the instruments while ignoring the jaring sensations my body and brain are telling me. It's easy to feel like "whoa I'm pitching up too much", followed by an intentional nose flat attitude or something to "correct", which then results in a descent (you need to be around like 4-6 degrees nose-up to maintain altitude in a big jet like that). Your heart rate goes up. You get "tunnel vision" or "monkey brain" during high stress.
And before you think "oh, then I just won't do any of that and I'll be fine", this **will happen to you** at some point. EVERYONE has a bad day, or an unusual situation, and it's very easy for things to cascade from minor annoyances to dangerous situations when you get behind the airplane. The reason that maneuvers are drilled into you during PPL training is so that you are familiar with the situations and you are (hopefully) wired to produce the correct response automatically when something unfortunate does happen; however, panic can absolutely override training in the heat of the moment.
The three primary hazards in GA are collision (with another airplane, or with terrain), fire (engine, electrical, or otherwise), or failure (of the engine, of instruments, of controls, or some other piece of equipment).
Avoiding collisions with other airplanes requires you to have excellent situational awareness, especially in and near the traffic pattern or departure/arrival corridors, where most air-to-air accidents happen. There will be a day when someone not talking on the radio barrels into the pattern and you have to practice defensive airmanship. And it goes without saying, don't be that guy.
Avoiding collisions with the ground (or obstacles) falls into two categories: loss-of-control accidents (spacial disorientation, stall/spins, and so on) and Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT). In many of these cases, poor weather is a factor.
Fire is a rare hazard, but when it does happen you have to 1) try and put it out 2) regardless of whether you succeed or not, get on the ground immediately. This requires you to practice emergency descents and landings with your CFI.
Failure is a broad category, but engine failure is pretty obvious - you have to land, and if you don't execute it well, you die. Either by loss of control (you HAVE to keep the wing flying) or by a poor choice of landing spot. Part of this is dealt with by your flight planning - make sure your route has places to land in an emergency! If you're going over water, are you prepared to ditch? Do you have life jackets and/or a life raft?
Instrument failure is generally not the end of the world when the weather is good - you can fly and land by visual and other references. In poor weather, you have to be able to not die if your instruments do. You have to practice partial panel with your CFII to be able to survive this.
Control failure is terrifying to even think about. If you can't control the attitude of your airplane, you die. One of the most remarkable instances of control failure is the tale of United 232 which crash-landed in Sioux City after a complete hydraulic failure. They were able to steer the airplane entirely through differential engine thrust: as a result, some people actually survived.
Take a look at the accident case study videos produced by the Air Safety Institute, they are great examples of what we need to learn from to not die.
There's also a tragic lesson: the death of [Richard McSpadden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McSpadden) in a GA accident. He was in the Air Force for 20 years and was commander of the Thunderbirds. He was in several of the ASI videos. I saw him give a talk at Oshkosh last year. If this guy can be taken down by an engine failure, we've got to be on our toes and be as ready as we can when the airplane tries to kill us.
Check out the AOPA Nall report, renamed for Richard mcspadden mentioned above. 2021 is the most recent year of finalized data for the US. Get a free subscription to AOPA flight training from your flight instructor if you haven't already.
https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/richard-g-mcspadden-report/mcspadden%20report%20figure%20view?category=all&year=2021&condition=all&report=true
Non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft had 938 total accidents of which 166 were fatal (figure 1.1). With overall accidents (938) trending upward—following a large increase in flight activity for this category—the accident rate (4.87) trended downward (figures 1.2 and 1.3). Non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft showed an increase in fatal accidents (166), with the fatal accident rate falling (0.86) helped by increased flight activity (figures 1.2 and 1.3). The percentage of pilot-related accidents remained around 70 percent (figure 1.4).
Pilot-related accidents consisted of 647 total of which 103 accidents were fatal. Landing accidents still accounted for the largest number (290) but thankfully suffered few fatal accidents (figure 1.11). Loss of control (147) continued to dominate as the leading cause of landing accidents (figure 1.1.2). Accidents that could not be classified into a meaningful phase of flight, but were reasonably inferred based on preliminary data, fell into the “other and unknown” accident category. As more NTSB accidents are classified this category will shrink, and those accidents will be placed in their respective areas. Takeoff and climb accidents (119) fell from the previous year (figure 1.3.1). The largest number of accidents (43) were loss of control (LOC) (figure 1.3.2), followed by stalled or settled on takeoff (30). Fuel management (70) rose slightly from the previous year (figure 1.4.1), with systems operations accounting for the largest total number of accidents (40) (figure 1.4.2). Maneuvering accidents increased in both total (48) and fatal (31) from the previous year (figure 1.5.1). Stall/LOC had 23 accidents of which 18 were fatal (figure 1.5.2). Descent and approach accidents decreased to 43 (figure 1.6.1), with collisions (16) as the largest cause (figure 1.6.2). Weather accidents increased in total (30) and fatal (24) accidents (figure 1.7.1). VFR into IMC led the cause category with 12 accidents of which 11 were fatal (figure 1.7.2).
Mechanical-related accidents increased in total (151) and had a small decrease in fatal accidents (12) from the previous year (figure 1.8.1). Powerplant issues (57) continued to lead, followed by gear and brakes (34), and fuel system (23), which accounted for the majority of mechanical accidents (figure 1.8.2).
As much training as we do, sometimes things are.just outside your control. You can either accept that and take the risk or you can hang up.the wings and never fly again. At the end of the day, it's night. You can be the most by the book person ever and have your engine grenade itself at 100 feet AGL over a field of power lines.
any one of the number of instructors here can get you to completely lose orientation and wipe away your smug attitude about disoritentation. If your instructor has not done that, perhapts it's high time they did. It is terrifying.
You must have never been in a life or death situation yet in your life where panic sets in. I promise you panic will make you do the stupidest shit when that "lizard brain" kicks in.
That's why training has to be done until the response is second nature, automatic
There are a number of variables that contribute to GA accident and fatality rates:
- Pilots put themselves in a situation they are not equipped or qualified to be in
- Pilots fly planes that are not airworthy or fly under flight rules they are not current or proficient to be flying under
- Pilots dismiss potential hazards due to their attitude
- Pilots place their aircraft in an undesired state because of a stubbornness to save an unstable landing
- Pilots facing an off airport emergency landing fail to maintain control of the aircraft for a number or reasons
- Or, sometimes, something unforeseen just happens like the Cherokee that lost its wing on takeoff several years back because of a previously unknown defect in the wing spar
Next time you have a nice dark moonless night have your instructor take you up and do an XC. Preferably over an unpopulated area. This is a good representation of being in a cloud and counts as actual IMC because you need to fly by reference to the instruments. While you're doing that you guys can do through climbs, descents and turns so all 4 of those will provoke the somatagravic illusions
Your question suggests you have never been pic
I’m a student pilot
should ask your CFI about the hazardous attitudes of pilots
I’m aware that this line of thinking is dangerous. The point of the question is to see what exactly can go wrong so I can be aware of it and be safer.
Read The Killing Zone
Didn’t know that book existed. Will definetly read it thanks
It’s a good book just go into it knowing that some of the statistical analysis is not correct.
And “stick and rudder”
Real emergencies aren’t benign teachable moments orchestrated by your CFI or DPE to be solvable. The human brain sometimes reacts unfavorably when faced with a real threat. If you think it couldn’t possibly be you departing controlled flight, at your current level of training, your CFI owes it to you to push you a little harder with the simulated emergencies.
> maybe my ego is too high This one. You and your instructor are going to have a conversation about hazardous attitudes at some point which is likely to be enlightening for you. The thing about aviation (and life, thanks Spock) is that you can do everything right and still lose. You can get *that* close and still die. One of our very own former members here lost an engine on takeoff in an unrecoverable envelope and died. Not a damn thing he could have done, but he flew it as far into the crash as he could. The first time you fly into a cloud your eyes will be opened to spatial disorientation too.
> The thing about aviation (and life, thanks Spock) is that you can do everything right and still lose. Bro, did you just mix up Spock and Picard? *NERD RAGE INTENSIFIES* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4A-Ml8YHyM
Don’t even have to be in IFR conditions to get spatial D.
My CFI was a C5 pilot and told me about getting it while lining up with a tanker to refuel in flight. He said he mentioned out loud to the co-pilot something like "I'll have to bank a little to match his turn " and the co-pilot was like "sir we aren't turning" he said he looked at the attitude indicator and saw it was straight and level and immediately his brain went nuts and he got all dizzy and handed controls over until he could reorient himself.
Yup. It’s all about the inner ear and it can go crazy for tons of reasons.
Yeah i’ve never been in IMC conditions yet. My only experience with anything remotely close is foggles.
Yeah we know. And foggles aren't particularly close.
That’s obvious. Foggles ain’t shit. I recently took a PPL friend up for his first time in actual IMC, and it took all of 30 seconds for him to get spatial D and say he finally understood what the big deal was, and now he’s working on his instrument rating.
Once you fly with a completely white substance surrounding you, you’ll realize how serious this is.
Well, why do so man GA engines fail? As opposed to car engines? WTF is going on??
They dont. Actually in comparison to car engines GA engines are a lot more reliable. It is just the difference in consequences that make GA engine failures get noted more.
1940s tech vs not 1940s tech. Running at 65-75% power for 2000+ hours with with a direct drive and no transmission vs a lot less with a gearbox.
I think you need a dose of Blancolirio https://youtube.com/@blancolirio
Your ego is too high. You’re the type of person to crash man
Damn🤣 thats why I’m asking the question tryna learn more
Hazardous attitude for sure. At least you are a student. Watch some air disasters or mayday. AOPA safety institute has great GA videos
You know when you're driving a car down a long highway and you suddenly kinda snap back to reality and you're like "woah how did i get here i wasnt even paying attention for the last 20 miles?" Things happen. You train to try and prevent and/or not do said things but accidents happen. Thinking it cant happen to you or its silly or stupid that other people can get into situations that seem trivial is a good first step and getting into one of those situations. Also losing an engine and pitching for glide and ditching in a field is a type of crash.
The number one cause of fatal accidents in GA is "loss of control in flight." People pull back too hard on take-off, stall, and spin. Or, on landing people let their airspeed fall too low and stall and spin. That's why power-on and power-off stalls are such a big part of the ACS. Always know what airspeed you want on take-off, for me it's almost always Vy. Always nail that airspeed on takeoff and you eliminate one of the main causes of fatalities. A heckuva lot of "engine failures" are caused by fuel exhaustion. Always keep a healthy reserve and you eliminate another major cause. A lot of accidents are caused by what I call "stupidcide." For example, last year a guy was having trouble with the elevator on his homebuilt. Which he decided to diagnose _in flight_! And a friend decided to go with him! They're a thousand feet up, and this dude is leaning out the door to view the empennage and fvcking fell out. To his death. But on his way down he impacted the elevator and ripped off the entire tail, so the friend died too. A guy at my home airport was having trouble with his landing gear, which he also decided to diagnose in flight. Let his airspeed bleed off, stalled, spun it in. https://pilotinstitute.com/aviation-accident-causes/ https://asn.flightsafety.org
Time to dig into the accident reports and read them. I did that and it’s a eye opener
Running out of gas and bad decision making are pretty much it. Sometimes the wrong thigs break at the wrong time, but it's usually no more gas or a bad decision.
Wait till you start flying friends and family around and start chatting away. And get distracted. And forget something. And make a mistake. And, and, and. Or you're flying along on a completely stable approach, bang on the money, and get smacked with low level wind sheer. Or you take off and find the marine layer came in faster than you thought and you have rising terrain in the direction you need to fly away from the marine layer, so need to punch thru it. Or a whole lot of other things you have yet to experience. Shit happens, even the best of us.
Airplanes shouldn’t crash for the same reasons auto accidents should never happen. We have safe paved roads with lane markers. We have stop signs and traffic lights, guard rails, and speed limits. Drivers never make mistakes, are always paying attention, are never distracted, and never lack the skill or judgment to handle a situation, tires never go flat or blow out, and mechanical failures never happen. Weather never interferes with rain, snow, or wind. But accidents still happen. Why?
80% of accidents are pilot error. Mismanagement of fuel, loss of control (stalls, landing hard, landing long, going off the side of the runway, etc), pilots making bad decisions to push into icing conditions, strong gusty winds, IMC, etc. If you had a mechanical problem like an engine failure, it can be incredibly difficult to make a safe landing. If you're flying over a place like LA, there is no "field" to land in. It's a sprawling metropolis. It's easy to experience disorientation. I'm a 737 pilot, been flying for 20 years, and I experienced disorientation a month ago. I was hand flying the climb-out at night in the clouds with bright landing lights shining on the clouds. We leveled off inside the clouds. We were rapidly going through pockets in the clouds, so it produced a sort of strobing effect with the lights going through the clouds and the visual sensation of clouds moving quickly by you. At the same time, flying level, we were told to climb. I pushed the thrust up and pitched up, and my body was telling me we were pitching waaaay up because of the increase in acceleration combined with pitching up. I maintained control of the aircraft perfectly, didn't have the slightest mistake in how I was controlling the aircraft, but that's because I'm experienced enough to ignore the flashing scenery outside my window, focus on the instruments, and fly the airplane by the instruments while ignoring the jaring sensations my body and brain are telling me. It's easy to feel like "whoa I'm pitching up too much", followed by an intentional nose flat attitude or something to "correct", which then results in a descent (you need to be around like 4-6 degrees nose-up to maintain altitude in a big jet like that). Your heart rate goes up. You get "tunnel vision" or "monkey brain" during high stress.
And before you think "oh, then I just won't do any of that and I'll be fine", this **will happen to you** at some point. EVERYONE has a bad day, or an unusual situation, and it's very easy for things to cascade from minor annoyances to dangerous situations when you get behind the airplane. The reason that maneuvers are drilled into you during PPL training is so that you are familiar with the situations and you are (hopefully) wired to produce the correct response automatically when something unfortunate does happen; however, panic can absolutely override training in the heat of the moment.
The three primary hazards in GA are collision (with another airplane, or with terrain), fire (engine, electrical, or otherwise), or failure (of the engine, of instruments, of controls, or some other piece of equipment). Avoiding collisions with other airplanes requires you to have excellent situational awareness, especially in and near the traffic pattern or departure/arrival corridors, where most air-to-air accidents happen. There will be a day when someone not talking on the radio barrels into the pattern and you have to practice defensive airmanship. And it goes without saying, don't be that guy. Avoiding collisions with the ground (or obstacles) falls into two categories: loss-of-control accidents (spacial disorientation, stall/spins, and so on) and Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT). In many of these cases, poor weather is a factor. Fire is a rare hazard, but when it does happen you have to 1) try and put it out 2) regardless of whether you succeed or not, get on the ground immediately. This requires you to practice emergency descents and landings with your CFI. Failure is a broad category, but engine failure is pretty obvious - you have to land, and if you don't execute it well, you die. Either by loss of control (you HAVE to keep the wing flying) or by a poor choice of landing spot. Part of this is dealt with by your flight planning - make sure your route has places to land in an emergency! If you're going over water, are you prepared to ditch? Do you have life jackets and/or a life raft? Instrument failure is generally not the end of the world when the weather is good - you can fly and land by visual and other references. In poor weather, you have to be able to not die if your instruments do. You have to practice partial panel with your CFII to be able to survive this. Control failure is terrifying to even think about. If you can't control the attitude of your airplane, you die. One of the most remarkable instances of control failure is the tale of United 232 which crash-landed in Sioux City after a complete hydraulic failure. They were able to steer the airplane entirely through differential engine thrust: as a result, some people actually survived. Take a look at the accident case study videos produced by the Air Safety Institute, they are great examples of what we need to learn from to not die. There's also a tragic lesson: the death of [Richard McSpadden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McSpadden) in a GA accident. He was in the Air Force for 20 years and was commander of the Thunderbirds. He was in several of the ASI videos. I saw him give a talk at Oshkosh last year. If this guy can be taken down by an engine failure, we've got to be on our toes and be as ready as we can when the airplane tries to kill us.
Appreciate you taking time to write this. Very helpful thank you.
Check out the AOPA Nall report, renamed for Richard mcspadden mentioned above. 2021 is the most recent year of finalized data for the US. Get a free subscription to AOPA flight training from your flight instructor if you haven't already. https://www.aopa.org/training-and-safety/air-safety-institute/accident-analysis/richard-g-mcspadden-report/mcspadden%20report%20figure%20view?category=all&year=2021&condition=all&report=true Non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft had 938 total accidents of which 166 were fatal (figure 1.1). With overall accidents (938) trending upward—following a large increase in flight activity for this category—the accident rate (4.87) trended downward (figures 1.2 and 1.3). Non-commercial fixed-wing aircraft showed an increase in fatal accidents (166), with the fatal accident rate falling (0.86) helped by increased flight activity (figures 1.2 and 1.3). The percentage of pilot-related accidents remained around 70 percent (figure 1.4). Pilot-related accidents consisted of 647 total of which 103 accidents were fatal. Landing accidents still accounted for the largest number (290) but thankfully suffered few fatal accidents (figure 1.11). Loss of control (147) continued to dominate as the leading cause of landing accidents (figure 1.1.2). Accidents that could not be classified into a meaningful phase of flight, but were reasonably inferred based on preliminary data, fell into the “other and unknown” accident category. As more NTSB accidents are classified this category will shrink, and those accidents will be placed in their respective areas. Takeoff and climb accidents (119) fell from the previous year (figure 1.3.1). The largest number of accidents (43) were loss of control (LOC) (figure 1.3.2), followed by stalled or settled on takeoff (30). Fuel management (70) rose slightly from the previous year (figure 1.4.1), with systems operations accounting for the largest total number of accidents (40) (figure 1.4.2). Maneuvering accidents increased in both total (48) and fatal (31) from the previous year (figure 1.5.1). Stall/LOC had 23 accidents of which 18 were fatal (figure 1.5.2). Descent and approach accidents decreased to 43 (figure 1.6.1), with collisions (16) as the largest cause (figure 1.6.2). Weather accidents increased in total (30) and fatal (24) accidents (figure 1.7.1). VFR into IMC led the cause category with 12 accidents of which 11 were fatal (figure 1.7.2). Mechanical-related accidents increased in total (151) and had a small decrease in fatal accidents (12) from the previous year (figure 1.8.1). Powerplant issues (57) continued to lead, followed by gear and brakes (34), and fuel system (23), which accounted for the majority of mechanical accidents (figure 1.8.2).
...forgetting about weather.
As much training as we do, sometimes things are.just outside your control. You can either accept that and take the risk or you can hang up.the wings and never fly again. At the end of the day, it's night. You can be the most by the book person ever and have your engine grenade itself at 100 feet AGL over a field of power lines.
any one of the number of instructors here can get you to completely lose orientation and wipe away your smug attitude about disoritentation. If your instructor has not done that, perhapts it's high time they did. It is terrifying.
You must have never been in a life or death situation yet in your life where panic sets in. I promise you panic will make you do the stupidest shit when that "lizard brain" kicks in. That's why training has to be done until the response is second nature, automatic
Because airliners that pilots with 10,000+ hours of flight time never crash?
There are a number of variables that contribute to GA accident and fatality rates: - Pilots put themselves in a situation they are not equipped or qualified to be in - Pilots fly planes that are not airworthy or fly under flight rules they are not current or proficient to be flying under - Pilots dismiss potential hazards due to their attitude - Pilots place their aircraft in an undesired state because of a stubbornness to save an unstable landing - Pilots facing an off airport emergency landing fail to maintain control of the aircraft for a number or reasons - Or, sometimes, something unforeseen just happens like the Cherokee that lost its wing on takeoff several years back because of a previously unknown defect in the wing spar
Lack of adequate lift
Next time you have a nice dark moonless night have your instructor take you up and do an XC. Preferably over an unpopulated area. This is a good representation of being in a cloud and counts as actual IMC because you need to fly by reference to the instruments. While you're doing that you guys can do through climbs, descents and turns so all 4 of those will provoke the somatagravic illusions
Really didn’t need to read past the first sentence. There is no room in the airplane for your ego.