This is what I had been thinking after reading the report again:
- The pilot was tracking from Murwillumbah to Taree and for the most part, the track was exactly that.
- The fact that he asked for a clearance to enter Class C was merely as he was going to pass through a small chunk of airspace and it would have been convenient.
- He gets bounced around and annoyed with ATC so comes up with another plan.
- He reports as ‘currently 4100 in clear and we’re OCTA' as you would expect with an update as he exited their airspace to do his own thing.
- He climbs back to 4,500ft for 5-6 minutes to remain hemispherically correct.
- Based on the track, he clearly has no intention of entering Class-D at 1,000ft or below as he'd have to turn 45 degrees left, a long way off track and may be over solid cloud at this time. Why would you, as he can't get down?
- He recalls that the cloud base is 2000-3000ft after witnessing it out of Murwillumbah.
("At the time of the incident the region was covered in widespread broken low cloud. With bases generally between 2000 - 3000ft above mean sea level")
- He checks the GPS and looks ahead knowing that past Mount Moombil area, that the terrain is very low and will likely be well clear of cloud.
- A controlled descent begins through cloud. ("The descent rate averaged about 850 ft per minute with a groundspeed between 165 kt and 175 kt") - this does not sound like an out-of-control descent as testified by the previous owner of the aircraft.
- Impact at 2,900ft.
- Had the descent begun only a couple of miles later, he would have missed the mountain completely and been in clear skies at 2000-3000ft.
BUT..... then I looked on the map and realised that he still had
90 nautical miles remaining!
Once I realised that, his actions made no sense, except for if he believed that the cloud ahead was worse than what he was currently experiencing and he needed to be under it.
The rest of his actions aside from the descent all made perfect sense and when you look at the airspace versus his track, then you can hardly blame ATC for such a tiny part of a bigger picture.
