Originally Posted by
Winnie
Robbiee , Gordy is anything but cavalier, and if properly trained, flying in **** weather isn't a big deal, but you HAVE TO respect when to stop, when to turn around and when to put down safely, if you don't then obviously it is dangerous.
Its like this dude, I've got around 360 night hours, with about 180 of that xc. Almost all of that is over water at some point with a few out over the butt-crack nowhere desert. However, when a guy crashed his 44 on a night inter-island flight in Hawaii, I wasn't going to say, "Well I fly at night over water all the time, so it couldn't have been disorientation that killed him,...must have been something else, 'cause those conditions are perfectly adequate". That would have made me look cavalier about the conditions.,...and a bit like an insensitive jerk.
But then I'm closer to that guy in experience, so I can relate, which seems to be an issue here from time to time. Its like these high time guys can't seperate what they do, and their experience from lower time pilots who didn't take the same path to becoming a pilot as they did.
Yeah, to a guy who flies in low visibility and low ceilings all the time this accident makes no sense, so they come on here projecting this cavalier attitude about the weather because they can't seem to get that to this guy, flying in those conditions was not normal. Its an empathy problem here.
He wasn't going out to fight a fire. He wasn't a Coast Guard pilot headed into a hurricane to rescue a boater. He was just a guy who dropped off a passenger, then wanted to get home. If you look at it from his point of view, then getting disoriented looks perfectly plausible.
He's sitting around waiting for it to get better. After a couple hours finds what he thinks is a 20 min window he can use to get home. He jumps in and takes off, but shortly thereafter it gets worse and he radios he wants to come back. Then he radios he doesn't know where he is. From my experience he got disoriented. Sure, he could have had a stroke right after takeoff, **** does happen, but if that had been me in that cockpit, I'd be dead too.