couple of points......
Whirly, you say,
There are PPLs and PPLs. If Jennifer has gained the experience to fly in such conditions without a formal IR qualification, then good luck to her
with all due respect, I think that's a dangerous road to go down - you're either IR qualified, or you're not, end of story. The accident reports are full of experienced VFR pilots who'd had the usual 5 hours instrument appreciation and thought they could hack real IFR. It's not that simple. You need to be rated and current.
Grainger, you quote the newspaper report
As I understand it they were trying to monitor the descent using a radar altimeter and contacted the surface unexpectedly when it was still reading approximately 140 feet
..........if that's what happened, I'm afraid in my book that kind of backs up what I'm saying.