Imagine you are sitting by a fast stretch of straight road, one with a nasty z bend at the end of it. It is misty - there may even be patches of fog. A car comes down that road at 80mph. A little while later it is found upside down in a ditch by the Z bend. What happened? It COULD have suffered brake failure or steering failure or a blow out or there could have been a deer or sheep on the road but by far the most likely cause is that the car was going too fast in inappropriate conditions and simply went off. That is a reasonable analogy of the Chinook crash. Gross negligence is a nasty word and most of us would settle for 'error of skill' but the fact remains that if those passengers had climbed into a commercial aeroplane belonging to the crummiest airline in the world they would still be alive but because they chose to get into a military ac flown by some jolly good eggs they got killed. The icing thing is a red herring - if the ac is not cleared to fly in icing and you encounter it, you turn round (as any ppl candidate will tell you). You do not point the ac at the nearest mountain and carry on. Flying over the sea in variable vis at low level close to the coast is extraordinarily dangerous. In my lifetime we have lost three Shackletons in those circumstances (one relatively recently) and over the same period at least four ac have gone missing inbound to Stornoway or Benbecula.The piloting community gets a pretty sympathetic hearing most of the time and we should not dissipate that goodwill by defending the indefensible. The government is not to blame for everything. Some accidents (actually, most of them) are caused by pilots.
I write because I have spent much of my life in the flight safety world and about 45 years of it flying aeroplanes. I have quite often got things wrong (and still do) and have been lucky enough to get away with it (up to now). But the new generation always seems to have to learn the basics all over again. The most common causes of accidents to VFR flights are weather and terrain. We have to learn that lesson.GM