Originally Posted by
Mike Flynn
The big difference is the way both flights started Pitts.
Flight planning starts on the ground not in the air.
In the case of this one it was a short positioning flight with an experienced instructor who having encounterd bad weather decided to press on instead of turning back.
In the Sala incident it was a pilot who by his own admission was “rusty” with instrument flying but had no night night rating and was attempting to carry out a public transport flight. He also had the opportunity to divert in to Guernsey for the night and continue the flight the next day.
The common denominator in both was lack of rational pilot decision making. They both chose not to declare a weather emergency and ask for help.
Both pilots wanted to satisfy those who were paying for the flying.
The Sala incident gets more coverage because he was an innocent passenger and not crew.
There is an old saying....
No job on a Monday morning is worth dying for on a Sunday afternoon.
Firstly Mike don't patronise me. I don't need to be educated on the flight planning process and neither do I need some folksy wisdom around old sayings.
Whilst we await the final report and the facts around the PA46 accident I would agree that poor weather decision making was likely at its heart, which is the common factor in this PA28 accident. So you having said they are very different accidents ultimately concede they are very similar.
I don't know and I don't care what your own personal piloting experience is but should you ever find yourself in the clag through your own mistake I suggest that declaring an emergency and asking for help is unlikely to change the outcome unless it is the Almighty you are talking to. See now you have got me at this patronising business, I apologise.
You have no idea what the compensation was with the PA46 flight, not a sausage - unless you do - and I invite you to lay out the pounds and pence, euro or cent amount that was to be paid. I suspect you can not give that. Neither can you highlight any long list of these "grey charter" flights that you deride that end in disaster.
What you are quite good at is trawling public records and other database information to join dots to create an environment of illegality that led to a venomous reaction from all.
It would seem to me that the only difference between this PA28 flight and the PA46 flight is the perception around funding. Pilots can make piloting mistakes and generally people can also get led into things that they wish they had not. The criticism by all may ultimately be fair comment and that is fine its just a great pity that some seem to be taking great delight in presenting assumption as fact, all the more so because as I have highlighted here it is all rather skewed.