And this comes from someone learning to fly
Two people lost their lives because of poor decisions made on that day. I happen to think that some people (and I include myself in that) will take something away from the sad circumstances that led to that accident
Excellent comment, since it shows that you have missed my point entirely!
So thanks for pointing out that I should have expressed myself more clearly.
There is something tremendously important to take with us from this accident, but it is not something we didn't already know.
It is a reaffirmation of what we already knew. It is the same thing we can "learn", in a way, from a whole lot of other accidents, similar to this one in that almost unfathomably poor decisions were made, for
one reason or another.
But it is not the particular reasons for why those decisions were made in each particular case, that are worth focusing our attention on and learning from. Rather, it is the fact that basic rules were not followed, and that the most fundamental aspects of the PPL training was overlooked. When one looks at the circumstances of serious GA accidents, one finds deliberate violations in a huge number of them (as opposed to professional flying, where errors and mistakes are far more common and violations feature more rarely in the causal factors).
What one should take away from this tragedy, IMHO, is the following:
a) Keep it simple, fly as we are taught, and follow the rules.
b) Whenever something appears complicated, see a).
But we knew that already. And that is what I meant with there being nothing to learn from this accident: There is nothing
new to learn, but perhaps a very useful
reminder of what it would prevent a huge part of fatal GA accidents. It is something we all learned, or are learning, during our PPL training. So let's not
unlearn it.