A sad sad tale no doubt, with the usual level of human misery part of the experience..and all completely avoidable.
Those were my thoughts when I read about this incident a couple of days ago, my heart then sank..because like Remoak, I know that the next guy/girl is just waiting in the wings to do the same thing all over again..
I'll go out on a limb here and state that I will be very very surprised to read if this was anything other than CFIT.
What this poor fella was thinking in those last few minutes before it all came unstuck we will never know...but we can probably make an accurate guess.
We can guess because there are plenty of us that have been in similar situations where circumstance dictates we make a decision to save our lives, and there but for the grace of god etc....
Looking back however at my training, and the training of my peers....there appears to be some significant variances with how things are done 17 years later.
Yes "C" cats were still hour building, but "B" cats were far more scarce, and in my experience tended to be lifers' or at the very least ex mil or airline bods, particularly in the provinces..and I certainly benefitted from that knowledge base, it saved my life more than once.
In the years gone by, I've done my fair share of single engine flying in that neck of the woods (I used to have a girlfriend in New Plymouth..and would fly down from Thames often via Te Kuiti) and that terrain scared the living Sh1t outta me on a nice day! why this fella felt the need to be plodding around there at night and in poor weather is frankly beyond me.