Ark Royal & Tandemrotor
But surely, WOrker and JP are not basing their argument on what might have happened in the last 15 seconds or so.
If I understand them correctly, they are arguing that the negligence is based on the fact that, at waypoint change they were under control and that, under the prevailing conditions, they were negligent in not turning away then, and BEFORE anything might have gone wrong. This has been the consistent argument from Wratten himself as I understand it.
This sounds very reasonable to me as an informed layman and this debate will not make any progress until that point is dealt with.
For me, any doubt must arise from a lack of knowledge of the exact conditions as seen from that point, at waypoint change. This is where I get frustrated by the Workers and JP’s of this world because it appears that the only known conditions they quote were at the lighthouse itself where, as our friend Walter Kennedy says, there was orographic cloud which could have been extremely local. The only other thing we know is that the Chinook was in sunlight about 2 miles before impact.
So the question now for me is – what could the crew (and I mean the whole crew) see at waypoint change which determines without any doubt that the pilots were negligent at that point. We know that they could not see the lighthouse. Can we know without any doubt what they could see? Some argue reasonably that they must have seen the base of the Mull or they would not have changed waypoint. That is all that is known.
If it is negligent to fly towards and within 20 seconds of a single cloud covered hill, then they must be guilty because that is the only thing we KNOW that they did. Yes, I expect that lots of nearby hills were cloud covered but I am not sure that we know that or to what extent that it limited their spatial awareness.
To sum up, can we say there is no doubt without seeing exactly what the crew could see when JP thinks they should have turned away?
For me, there is still too much extrapolation going on here. i.e. it’s like drawing the graph you want with too few measurements.