Who has not made that mistake in aircraft that had a manual heading bug or one that did as described in the Report?
Night, messy weather, a couple of IIMC events, rising terrain about, single pilot, no NVG's, and one can see how a fellow can get overloaded.
Good thing all survived what could have easily been a very bad outcome.
The Pilot should not feel too badly....as in my opinion he had a lot of help getting into that situation.
The Report spent a lot of time on the technical issues and in time hopefully it will delve into the collateral issues re training, standard operating procedures, and minimal for night ops without NVG.
Use of a fitted AFCS using Upper Modes (at the minimum of heading hold, altitude hold) at night at all times other maneuvering to land in clear visual contact with the surface via either celestial or ground based lighting or both with the landing spot/runway in view.
Years ago we had a very good discussion about just that during approaches to offshore landing sites.
It was seen to provide an improvement in the visual approaches to Rigs and Platforms at night and that was in aircraft with two Pilots.
One of our frequent posters here was directly involved in that effort and gained credit for that concept.
You might take a look back at the Kobe Bryant crash near Los Angeles that figured in a long thread here that involved a fully kitted out S-76 that was crashed into terrain following a loss of control by the Pilot flying it Single Pilot.
During an IIMC event at night is not the best of times to try to figure out why the AFCS is not working as you think it should and perhaps a natural instinct would be to manually disconnect what you think is a failed AFCS and. try to hand fly the machine.
Years of teaching in Simulators I have seen exactly that when all that was going on was the HDG Bug had not been rotated to somewhat very near the current Heading of the aircraft when the Pilot elected to engage the Heading Hold function.
In todays magic flying machines perhaps the Authorities should require the AFCS to automatically slew to the current heading....and thus prevent this from happening.
That would change the protocol to requiring the Pilot to manually choose a different Heading than the aircraft is on if a heading change is desired.
Or am I all wrong in thinking that way?