I had a funny feeling the thread/story would accelerate faster than a locomotive.
There are a lot of valid questions being asked here and no doubt some will be answered by the officials (CASA)some day.
But for now I'd like to add some answers in the mean time.
The life raft is often placed in the 'boot' of these small jets as there is no room within the main seating area, besides such an item needs to be stowed well & truly for a ditching, hence it was not accessed due the rapid nature of the A/'C sinking, better to get out with life jackets only than to go down with the hull whilst stuck inside trying to retrieve the bulky raft amongst amongst all the med equipment & believe me at times the plane of full of it!
Mercy flights under extraordinary circumstances can be conducted from at the flight planning stage where there are no other options at hand & it's a life threatening situation, obviously SOP need to be followed for this with any Co.This will be determined am sure whether this applied in this case.
One thing that I have not read here but may have missed is COMMERCIAL PRESSURE. It happens in ALL sectors of aviation. These tasks represent big money & we ALL live by money alone! It would be nice to make all flights perfectly safe but we don't live in a perfect world now do we? Airliners to ultralights crash & will continue to do so, that's the very nature of aviation, it's all about risks, calculated risks. Am not saying that the hapless pilot was under any commercial pressure other than to complete the mission & to stay alive when it went sour or even PelAir where making anybody do anything they didn't want to but now after the event perhaps we can all learn from it. Humans have only ever learnt from making mistakes, I have, we all have in life.
I think under the extreme duress this crew where facing when a ditching was imminent they did a good job but also remember everyone what was going thru their minds as they knew they was running out of fuel must have been terrifying!.
Can you perform yr duties flawlessly under that level of stress when perhaps training wasn't as good as at airline level? And even then that guarantees zip!
As for the Wx forecasts etc? Well half the flights planned to such places wouldn't even leave the ground if they where going strictly by the book without some human interpretation, humans make decisions & sometimes not good ones whether that applies here we or not we shall see.
My most steepest learning curve & most challenging times was when I was doing OS MediVacs, this is an area that few experience.
More to come am sure but lets be objective hey?
Wmk2