Chinook - Still Hitting Back 3 (Merged)

[walter kennedy]

John Blakeley
An excellent, informative, and timely post - at the very least, you have put to bed two important basic factors pertaining to this flight: the speed and the weather.
Firstly the speed: your quote supports Boeing's ("Analysis...", not simulation) such that it was appropriate for an HC2 cruising and not "hurried"/etc;
Secondly, the yachtsman's fuller account of the weather confirms what I have tried to describe as being typical in those conditions - specifically, in his description of how the lighthouse appeared, that the colour of the ground could be seen through the ground hugging mist that ran up the slopes beneath the base of the local orographic cloud.
It was not a case of their being lost in IMC but simply that range from the landmass would have been very difficult to estimate visually. The only way this could have affected their flight was if they had a reason to approach the Mull closely. Certainly, if they merely were passing by the Mull on their "ferry" flight, the position where they changed the waypoint was already too close in in those conditions given the (in)accuracy of the STANS unless they had some other reference.
Boeing's analysis made an important point regarding their altitude on the final leg (waypoint change to the crash site) and that was the higher value was consistent with their not having climbed at all until the last seconds; given that they had started to slow down and that their course (and actual track) of 035 was the ideal line to that LZ (I have described previously in detail), together with the other parameters I have previously mentioned pointing to a close approach or landing to that LZ, it seems reasonable to assume that they thought their actual track was taking them over that LZ. Had they been a little further out than they actually were, their speed would have been lower when they crossed the shoreline giving them more climbing ability if required - more crucially, had their track been over the LZ and they had been at the higher of the range of altitudes (as per Boeing'a analysis) their approach, even in those conditions, would have been safe as (if you study the topography along this track) they had a nice clear waveoff option just veering off to the left if they could not make out the LZ - this was not an option on their actual track.
I have made the point previously that the approach to the Mull was an excursion from a safe, preplanned route that they were intending to return to and this (with other suporting parameters) indicates a deliberate exercise - that they would attempt an approach to that LZ in those conditions without a local reference beggars belief - a local reference that should have been at the LZ but was 1/2 mile up the slope explains everything that is known about this flight.
At the very least, discounting consideration of any such local reference, if they had been deliberately approaching that LZ (for whatever reason), and it was known to the heirachy that this was their intention, then the crash could be seen as an error of judgement as opposed to gross negligence as this finding would have been based on false assumptions.