Originally Posted by
sandiego89
Because it was cloudy along the coast. Coastal California is notorious for coastal clouds and fog, which can dissipate by mid-day and change rapidly by just going a few miles inland. It can be socked it at the coast, and bright and sunny a half mile inland (and at takeoff location). See post 161 for flight paths taken on previous flights and the accident flight. The coastal fog seemed worse than normal on this day, prompting a decision to take a further inland route up intestate 5 to the San Fernando Valley, then west.
If I may second sandiego89's point. I spent just under five flying out of North Island (San Diego Area). And various points north in coastal southern california.
The coastal fog was a thing that we always had to be wary of and had to have a back up plan for. As he says, you can be a few miles inland and it's not a factor at all, but for a while each morning our coastal fields and bases often shut down flight ops and just waited for the stuff to go away/burn off. In a related anecdote, it wasn't that uncommon on the weekend, if you were up with the dew sweepers at Torry Pines public golf course, to tee off into the fog on the first hole and not be able to see where your ball went. By the time you reached number 9 yere were in the well known, stereotypical gorgeous SoCal weather.
On my not-too-frequent forays into the cluttered airspace of the LA area, I flew with a paranoid mindset. Why? Because we were not used to that kind of traffic density where we normally operated, and we had less of a "feel" for the local terrain/features/nuances of the airspace volume.
This pilot was likely very used to all of the ins and outs, and nuances, of the LA flying area: the traffic density, the way the fog rolls in, when and how, major and minor roads ...
He was in an around it for years.
So what made this flight different?
It is unfortunate that there isn't a CVR or FDR for the NTSB to consult.
I'll be interested to see what they come up with.