Couldn’t agree more Crab. There should have been nothing difficult about that departure had the pilots had the ability to “fly the just f***ing aircraft“, as you put it so well. They clearly were relying on the AFCS to do the job for them but weren’t anything like proficient enough on how to use it. I’ve not flown a 139 but am pretty sure it would be a nice stable platform with which to pull the collective from the hover with wings level and hover pitch, until they got to a safe height to calmly tip the nose down 15 deg or whatever to get Vmini and climb away under complete control and with spatial awareness. Even the basics of the PNF calling the heights was missing! Seems too that, just like G-LBAL, they were too keen to get some airspeed before they’d really got high enough, no doubt because they were not confident of the procedure or their ability to follow it.
Interesting and very worrying Non-PC. I think part of the problem is that some owners think that just because they’ve bought a nice shiney big IFR twin with lots of bells and whistles, and have a pilot(s) who has a confident air and a sharp shirt, they must be in good hands. They just don’t know how different and more challenging flying can be at times, such as night and bad weather.