Accepting it looks the pilot had been ticking enough boxes for an incident to occur I have not spotted in this thread any real discussion on other safety aspects, I have only P2'd a Malibu a few times but dare I say there is a chance its so much like the feel of a "proper" executive aircraft rather than the overgrown Arrow i.e a single engine piston I fly they were probably both up front where you have to climb forward from the rear stepped door and having got to the incident phase were they putting the limited survival odds in their favour? Such as already wearing life jackets but then assuming the 88% chance of surviving the water landing in very good conditions which they clearly wern't would a footballer be confident of opening a pressurised rear door having clambered from the front possibly wet, in shock and with head injury in the dark and losing valuable time to exit, at least a P28 series you can wedge the door open in flight so it does not jam. Someone above said it probably was not equipped with ADSB etc because of its age, my aircraft is 40 years old and I have had mode s 330 for many years and more recently ADSB in and out and FLARM in and out and its not all just for collision avoidance its all part of a safety attitude so a tad unfair to assume all owners are the same but if you are going to become a needle in a haystack of sea getting an accurate position report out is crucial as is wearing your PLB in advance and any passenger faced with any of this would not have a clue of what to do for the best. Add all this together with the comments above and I cant see that anything was in their favour from the start and sadly they will have perished, probably within hours. The FAT one above has made safety comments elsewhere with links and they are worth a read as that aspect of planning is as important as anything else. I am not in the camp of don't fly a single piston over water, yes there is a risk and we cant all afford to fly a King Air but this is unlikely to be an engine failure and the aircraft does not know if its night or over water and they don't fail very often, the last tragic Alderney ditching I believe was a PA28 a few years back who ran out of fuel, his wife survived by clinging onto a tyre but sadly but it was a whole list of ticking error boxes in advance and as we all know flying is completely unforgiving if the human input is all wrong. Here's hoping everyone here manages to avoid the same mistakes and fly's safe as about the only good that can now come out of this one and those two poor chaps, RIP, is that a few learn something new and others like me are very clearly reminded of the risks and do everything possible to minimise them. All very sad
