Originally Posted by
vortex-generators
Without knowing the focal strength of this camera, it would be a guess, but I would say he was in legal flight visibility.
Refer to 8driver's point. If you're not competent or capable of flying on instruments then what matters is the visual cues available to you to allow you to determine your attitude and the rate of change so that your brain gets to complete that pesky hand-eye feedback loop. In flight visibility rules are only a regulatory tool to try to ensure visual references can be maintained, and generally at the pre-flight planning stage. It's a means, not an end. Try to accurately estimate visibility in flight.
Lose the ability to comprehend your attitude and take appropriate action then catastrophy occurs (see the recent Coulson C130 accident).
In control but not thinking about the terrain? Loss of situational awareness leading to CFIT.
Lose control because you can't maintain attitude? Loss of control in flight leading to UFIT.
Personally, I think that the balance of probably lies with CFIT. The only LOC indication is 'powered rotation'. Maybe he red-lined the torque when he saw terrain and ran out of tail rotor, maybe he tried to turn-away at last minute and used a bootfull of pedal. It draws a fine line between CFIT and UFIT but doesn't change the cause, which was his being there in the first place. What-If's about technical failures by lawyers might make this another Mull of Kintyre, which I doubt it is.