My view of this accident is straightforward....
Weather...200 overcast, 3/4 SM visibility (some reports said it was snowing that night)
Moon...83% illumination, but it did not rise until 2139,1+ 59 minutes after the takeoff, and 1+14 after the crash.
Route of flight.....remote area with very sparse small groups of lights.
NVG's are wonderful devices. They are probably the best things since the Sexual Revolution of the late 60's-70's.
They have their limits as all things do. I suggest that the weather and darkness combined at some point in this flight to the point that the NVG's could not cope with the reduced visiblilty and at that point, the pilot found himself in a very difficult situation.
That is not the kind of weather I wish to fly VFR for any distance offshore in the daytime , much less cross country in the snow covered mountains of New Mexico at night. The accident investigation will have to determine the circumstance surrounding this accident and make a report. We will have to wait for that before we can hold forth on what really caused the aircraft to impact the ground.
We can sit here at our keyboards and what-if this to pieces and that is as it should be. Our industry does a poor job of communicating "Lessons Learned" so we can all be the better for things like this that happen. I think it is healthy to use such events as catalysts to question what we do in our daily work. If we see similarities between what happend to this guy....maybe we can alter what we do to make our flying a bit safer. Afterall, something like this could happen to anyone of us at any time. Maybe not a snowy night in Trindidad or Belize....but maybe a police pilot in the north end.
Personally, I would like to meet this guy, and have a long talk with him and hear his account first hand. It would be educational to see how the chain of events all came together to make this event occur. We know every accident is a set of occurrences that link together to cause accidents and to know how this one happened would be useful to others doing the same kind of work.
The FAR's play a role in it I am sure. Part 91 unlike Part 135 and most OpSpecs does not have a requirement to have sufficient external lighting to control the aircraft. Since this flight was with just the pilot on board, did he use Part 91 or Part 135 to conduct the flight? That would determine what visibility and weather requirements he had to comply with. I wonder what the weather report was at the time he checked weather? Did a snow squall cross his route of flight at a critical time?
Personally, I would like to see FAR Part 91 be changed to parrot the wording of Part 135 when it comes to night VFR weather miniumums. And...I would like to see EMS pilots start adhering to that regulation better than they do now. That one change would improve the safety of EMS flying greatly. If you do not have the external light reference required by the Regs....turnaround and go home or do it IFR with all the bells and whistles, training, and currency required.
Last edited by SASless; 25th Mar 2005 at 03:32.