Crazy Monkey
You said:
Considering the high value of the SLF
With respect, what on Earth does the 'value' of the SLF have to do with this? Or even that passengers were present at all? I, as the pilot, am concerned about getting my fragile body from A to B in one piece. The presence of 25 passengers (however valuable) has no bearing on how I conduct the flight.
You also say that the pilot........
should not have descended to low level
......but the intention was always to conduct the entire flight at low level and the aircraft never climbed above a few hundred feet.
Courtney
You say that the aircraft......
was in controlled flight at the time of impact
......but this is not an established fact. Indeed, the AAIB-calculated aircraft attitude at impact would be relatively extreme for an aircraft flying IMC and I would tend towards it, therefore, NOT being in control at the time of impact.
You go on to ask......
the question is, what were they doing at that position, at that speed and in those conditions?
....to which the answer can only be "Nobody will ever know". It is false logic to infer that an aircraft that hits the ground in cloud is under control (CFIT).
You state that the aircraft wasn't inverted. This appears to be true for the moment of impact, but, like the US Army Chinook that I mentioned in an earlier post, ZD576 may have been inverted and out-of-control prior to the impact. The point of this whole campaign is that we'll never know, there is no evidence to prove the pilots' negligence "beyond any doubt whatsoever" and a finding of Gross Negligence is wholly unsafe.
If a CVR recording existed that contained dialogue along the lines of:
Pilot A: Looks like the cloud's on the surface ahead.
Pilot B: Nah, it's fine, let's just punch straight through it.
....we would have evidence of negligence, but we don't and they should not have been found guilty of misjudgement, let alone Gross Negligence.
Finally, you state......
the engines were working with no fadec problems and there were no little green men present
......but we don't know that there were no FADEC problems and (with tongue not completely in cheek) we don't
even know that no little green men were present! With respect, like AM Wratten, you are confusing your opinion with fact.