the only good thing that can come from this accident is a searching analysis of the way the CAA regulates SPIFR
For pity's sake, what has SPIFR got to do with anything? You DO NOT KNOW what happened to that Seneca and until you do, it's wrong, and immoral, and defamatory to the memory of that pilot, to sit here and use this crash as a building block for your little anti-SPIFR arguments.
As for
[my] statement that two crew aircraft are certified that way because they need it is also garbage. The workload flying single pilot, no autopilot on a nonprecision approach into a dark hole on a crap night far exceeds anything required in a larger two crew operation. In fact you're not two crew, you've got a proper autopilot that should be able to manage the flightpath laterally and vertically. It's considerably more difficult to monitor in SPIFR when you're at the coalface.
If you are operating ATOs single pilot, no autopilot then you are of course breaking the law. The only aircraft legally allowed to operate IFR without them are small
multi crew types. Eagle operate dozens of flights every day without autopilots, SPIFR Senecas are not allowed the same luxury. The J31s I regularly operate across the North Sea are non autopilot equipped. And I maintain that the workload for a captain in this operation is much higher than it ever was, when I single crewed an approach to minimas in a PA34 ambulance into Wairoa at 3 am. The stress levels experienced are not necessarily the fault of the FO, it's possible to line train a person here in the Scottish summer without seeing a cloud or a breath of wind, and then come the North Sea winter they're into 4 months of snow, ice, 300 ft bases and 35 kt crosswinds every day. That is the reality of the operating environment we live in, and it's all perfectly legal, but hey at least it's not SINGLE PILOT so it must be safe right
It is in fact possible for multi crew operators to fly into the sides of hills as well. Have a think about Ansett at Palmie, the Dakota into the Kaimais or the DC10 at Erebus. Look at the causes of those individual accidents, and tell me how you would have CAA legislate against those.
Your single minded focus on the alleged shortcomings of SPIFR and the need to 'regulate' it out of existence, before any cause whatsoever of this crash has been found, is disturbing and it's something I would expect from a sensation seeking journalist rather than a professional aviator, who knows that air crashes whether they're single or multi crew, are nearly always complex things with many contributing factors that all came together at the wrong moment.
My objection is not about debating the rights and wrongs of SPIFR (although I would certainly not draw my legislative advice from a bunch of anonymous strangers on an internet professional pilots forum, who are just as likely to be plane spotters, journalists, flight sim buffs or armchair PPL crash investigators). My objection is to the nasty little whispering and speculating campaign that always goes on amongst the ill informed after a fatal accident of this nature. And at this stage we are
all ill informed. No one knows what happened up there, so out of respect for a good man's reputation, we should all shut the hell up until we know something.
If it turns out that the accident was caused by a control jam, or a goose through the front window, or an instrument failure, or one of the million other things that could have bought that plane down which have nothing to do with pilot error or SPIFR or anything else, then I hope you have the grace to come back on here in a few months time and retract your statements.