It’s all very well trying to exonerate the pilot. It’s all very well for pilots to hope that it was an equipment failure rather than a fellow pilots shortcomings, which in turn could mean they could also mess up in the same manner. But, and remember no-one knows what happened yet, the flight was perfectly normal until it wasn’t. By that I mean we have a vfr flight. Single pilot. Held and routed due to weather. Everything is pretty much fine until they reach the point where many witnesses state that the weather was foggy. The aircraft was most likely IMC in a hilly area. Now it would have to be such a massive and unlikely coincidence if this turns out to be a mechanical failure, where it also happens that all of the aircraft arrives at one crash site. Nothing apparently departed the aircraft in flight. It was heard flying and sounding normal right up to the part where there is an increase in blade noise due to probable abrupt manouvering. Then a thud. So is it likely that something failed just as they happened to be in fog/low cloud, in a rising ground situation, or is it more likely that the pilot just got it wrong and was disorientated? I know where my gut feeling is leaning. But we don’t know, and will probably never know exactly what happened but im
certain the NTSB will do their best and provide best investigated answers.
the autopilot on an s76 does have the ability to ‘go-around’ at the press of a button
watch out for reports of a large passenger aircraft very nearly doing the same very very recently in the UK. IIMC is not good in any sense.
Last edited by helimutt; 31st Jan 2020 at 07:49.