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Old 3rd Feb 2005, 13:54
  #22 (permalink)  
Luke SkyToddler
 
Join Date: Mar 1999
Location: Domaine de la Romanee-Conti
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Righto MOR point taken, I'll edit that sentence since it seems to bother you, it was hardly central to the main argument.

I think YOU've completely missed MY point, that now is not an appropriate time to go engaging about statistical likelihoods of CFIT, pilot error, and unsafeness of SPIFR ops in general, before any kind of official pronouncement of what caused this particular crash was made.

I too, have experienced the loss of a very good mate on a similar SPIFR operation. Within hours we found ourselves in the middle of an enormous media beat up on our company, on the mental state and (superlatively good) skills of the pilot in question, and the dangers of flying SPIFR in general. It turns out post investigation, that the accident was caused by a technical fault completely unrelated to anything to do with issues of single crew or IFR, and there was nothing that one pilot or two or all the pilots in the world could have done to stop that plane from crashing. It didn't stop my mate's reputation being comprehensively smeared by a kangaroo court of so called TV reporters and aviation experts and all the usual hangers on, before anything official had been found. It's very easy for the offending media 'speculators' to publish an official retraction in the small print of some newspaper a year later, but the damage is always done by then in the minds of the public.

Maybe it was CFIT and maybe it wasn't. Maybe the lack of two pilots was a contributing factor and maybe it wasn't. The point is, that all pilots (and especially dead ones who are unable to defend themselves) should be deemed innocent until proven guilty. Sitting here bickering amongst ourselves about CFIT statistics and relative safety of SPIFR, is not going to help that process one little bit.
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