Crab
As ever, very good take on all of this. But did Ara really not have a current IR? And I guess even if he did, an issue would be his IMC currency. Pretty extraordinary to be flying an S76 without surely?
And does anyone know what the weather was like at the intended destination? And how would Ara have known that - was there a nearby airfield with met reporting? How much further did he have to run? One of the biggest risk areas of ops to private sites in poor weather is uncertainty of weather there. Reports from particularly non pilots are to be given little weight in my experience.
But fundamentally I do groan at yet another stupid accident that should never have happened. All the form filling out and box ticking issues are just peripheral - there was just grossly incompetent pilot judgement here I’m afraid. If it was the usual low time PPL in an R44 scenario it wouldn’t have surprised too much, but a charter operator with a celeb in a S76....