Originally Posted by
vanHorck
It makes for painful reading. The track and altitudes suggest to me a possible scenario of spatial disorientation (the Kennedy accident springs to mind) , perhaps due to IMC conditions, unless he decided to turn back to land at an alternate? 180 degrees turn to the right, a climb prior to the crash. I hope they will find the iPad and perhaps recover data from it.
I am happy the AAIB seems to also be looking into the legislative part of the flight.
I am also happy the AAIB have confirmed for non commercial on an N register an equal part cost sharing and common purpose are required. No ambiguity here! EASA should in my view adopt the same common purpose for cost sharing.
The UK night rating is easy to obtain if you only fly near built up areas. However flying over the sea or mountains at night is a different scenario. It appears in this case the pilot was very experienced in day paradropping where most of his hours were acquired.
I got my UK night rating with only five hours experience at Cardiff back in 1982. Amazingly that allowed me to fly from Guernsey to Cardiff at night with no visual reference to the surface.I say none because it is often difficult to see the sea at night and certainly from a safe altitude in a small hand flown aircraft.
I wonder if his lack of communication with Guernsey and concern for the weather was because of his training at a small airfield?
Feeling intimated by the situation he found himself in with a reluctance to admit to his passenger and air traffic he was out of his depth?
He was flying a nicely equipped Malibu with a full coupled three axis autopilot. He could have declared a pan and asked for help or indeed just diverted in to Guernsey and told the passenger it was because of weather problems.
The bottom line is just like the Buddy Holly pilot he decided he could not admit the circumstances were beyond his skills.