Caz:
"If they could see the cliffs at a range of 1km, I am convinced that no reasonable pilot would then have flown straight on towards the rapidly rising ground before intending to turn left along the line of the cliffs whilst remaining below the cloud base. If this was their intention, they should have started to reduce speed and turn left between sighting the cliffs and making the Way Point change. We know they did not do this.
If, on the other hand, they sighted the cliffs at 1 km range and intentionally decided to proceed straight ahead and cruise climb on track over the mountain, the pilots action's would have amounted to recklessness, which is a more severe degree of negligence than Gross Negligence."
I concur with Sir John's statement.
Which one? True, we know in case one, that they 'did not do this'. We also have no idea why not. If they deliberately turned right, selected an arbitrary climb configuration, hoping to miss the Mull by a couple of hundred feet in IMC the sure, they were gulity of gross negligence, or worse.
Do I note BTW that the moment of negligence has now shifted from an empty chair in the mess at breakfast time, to a suicidal lunge in the last ceconds of flight?
JP, when I saw this:
My suggestion as to why they pressed on is, as I have always said, pure speculation, ie. they mistook the fog station for the lighthouse, which was around 500 meters off their intended track , and the hill behind was thus around 300 ft higher than they expected.
But that theory is irrevelant; they should not have been near that coast at low level in those met conditions. What is arrogant about that?
I thought we'd finally won you over! Your, or anyone else's 'suggestions' and 'pure speculations' are just that, not proof. What part of 'clear of cloud, in sight of surface' precludes flight 'near the coast'? Not arrogant, but plain wrong.
And then this:
Brian Dixon. The one big unknown in all this, is why the crew pressed on instead of following the coast. We shall never know, but I have (many times) offered a perfectly reasonable and logical explanation, which has not been refuted by you or by anyone else. With all due regards, JP
Again, your perfectly reasonable explanation (which one of many you have put forward BTW) is just that. There are many.