Originally Posted by
compressor stall
There are plenty of other failings to talk about; there's no proof that not being VMC is one of them.
True, even if you had a panel of experienced pilots in any live cockpit in marginal conditions you would never get complete agreement as to what does and what doesn't constitute VMC. Collins mentioned repeatedly being in VMC, so should he therefore be given the benefit of the doubt? Perhaps. But the cloud layer at 2000' was far from the only one, and I find it very very hard to believe that in the prevailing conditions that Collins
did maintain VMC at all times during the descent. What we do know, at the very least was that conditions were far from ideal for either sightseeing or VFR flying of a large commercial jet in general. And as you say, there were plenty of other failings to focus on.