Originally Posted by
helmet fire
...(PS: would they have hit the ground if the pilot could see it?)
Well no, a qualified pilot was flying the helicopter when it entered cloud and crashed. The pilot wasn't IFR qualified, and the helicopter wasn't instrumented for flight in IMC. Presumably if he didn't enter cloud he would have seen the tree and avoided hitting it. From what I recall, because I was working in PNG at the time of the accident, the pilot was on his first tour and was not being directly supervised in an unfamiliar and operationally challenging environment. Which I found odd, for the company training pipeline to throw a new hire pilot in the deep end like that. So, whilst it might seem at first self evident that a pilot who flies into cloud and hits a tree might be totally responsible for the ensuing outcome, the Appeal Court unanimously found otherwise.