Luke S-T
So what goes wrong?
It's basically an age-old story of overconfidence and perceived invulnerability.
Any newly minted CPL, despite probably having been told many times that it is simply a licence to learn, will feel pretty good about themselves and will often think they are fully equipped to get away with pretty much anything. In this case, I'm sure the guy was probably thinking that he could get out of his difficulties right up until he hit the ridge. The problem is, that without a decent level of experience, he probably both over-estimated his ability to escape the situation, and under-estimated just how serious his situation was.
Speaking from my own experience (both GA and airline), there often comes a point where you have been working increasingly hard to resolve a problem, and you suddenly realise that, oh ****, I'm in trouble here! At that point, the brain either stops working, your grip on the controls increases, and you essentially freeze up, or your brain yells "DO SOMETHING!!!' and you execute an escape manoeuver (ie a climb to MSA, turn towards the sea, etc). The second option only works if you have thought it through beforehand and made a plan, of course.
So back to your question. It happens because pilots get over-confident and get into trouble too quickly to get out of it again, or because the don't recognise their situation as being dangerous in the first place, or because they suddenly realise that they are in trouble and they panic.
It also happens if their instructors have not prepared/warned/monitored them properly to ensure that they will recognise trouble when they see it. However, that is only ever a secondary reason, the pilot is always in charge of his or her own destiny and has to live or die with his or her decisions.
I taught a lot of students, back when the CAA would let me, and some of them were just accidents waiting to happen. Way over-confident, typical extreme-sports types who thought that risk taking was a fun thing to do, and who never really considered the consequences of anything they did. Getting them to interpret weather or NOTAMs was always a major chore, and they had little appreciation of what weather was really like... but they passed their exams, the ASL FTO passed them, so they ended up as C cats. I pitied their students and tried to "help", but most students liked the idea of a gung-ho instructor, so it was a waste of time.
During my period instructing, I had fellow instructors who:
- thought it was OK to land on a country road and fill up with pump gas when they mis-managed their fuel plan;
- decided to formate on me without bothering to tell me first;
-cut in front of me when I was on short finals, while laughing about it over the radio;
- tried to impress female students by doing chandelles in the training area, lost it, ended up in a spin and barely recovered;
-came back from Omaka one crappy day at 200';
-intentionally entered cloud, iced up, lost all forward vis and very nearly crashed into a ridge;
- and a CFI who got a job flying in PNG anf flew into a cliff while in cloud a few months later.
I doubt that much has changed in the intervening years, particularly as the CAA have little interest in actual regulation.
There are some pretty damning YouTube videos featuring NZ instructors if you look around.
Compare that to the airline world... when I check out a pilot, either on a line check or in the sim, he or she is required to operate to SOPs. If they deviate for any reason, they have to explain why. Unless the explanation is very good, they fail. If they do not fly the correct speeds, they generally fail. If they at any time demonstrate a "cowboy" attitude, they fail. You see the difference? We simply do not allow the attitudes that you find in GA. That is why the airlines (and the military) will always be safer than GA. The CAA don't help, as they take an essentially "hands off" attitude to regulation (whilst wringing their hands over the experience levels amongst instructors).
It's all about attitude, you either have a professional one or you don't. That includes the CAA, who don't understand the word "professional".
Oh, andf Night VFR is the stupidist thing I have ever heard of. If you want to fly at night, go get an instrument rating. Anything else is dicing with death.
I agree with the rest of your post, BTW.
"Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous, but to a degree even greater than the sea is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity, or neglect." -Cap. A.G. Lamplaugh, British Aviation Insurance Corp., ~1930