Indeed the last four high profile cases have been with rated (variously IMCR and IR) pilots screwing up badly in one way or another.
I am not completely sure which four you refer to, though one of them must be the recent one near Nice.
When I read some accident report (and I have read many many) I try to take something home from it.
The problem I have with the "IR holder CFITs", and these are usually discussed here on pprune fairly thoroughly and much more so than on any other forum, is that they are just plain weird, bizzare, nonsensical.
N2195B (which lived in "my" hangar) was an IR holder who was > 2T but his Seneca did not have the 1999kg STC, and this was possibly a factor in why he flew mostly VFR on his long foreign trips. I happen to know (can't say how) that he used to file around 10 Eurocontrol flight plans per year, so he did know about "IFR". His final flight was "VFR", mostly in IMC (the BEA report doesn't say that but they barely bother in their GA reports), and into conditions which made it clear he never even checked the BBC weather, let alone looked at tafs, metars, mslp, radar, IR, whatever, as well as having no clue that there is "terrain" in the lower bit of France. A very good friend of mine was the last to see his family alive, and when he pointed at the OVC006 RA conditions (what a scream, filing "VFR", hey?) he was told by the highly intelligent PhD economist pilot that he "always flies". With no oxygen, he cut off his wx escape routes, apart from a 180 which he was unlikely to consider anyway. What is one supposed to make of that?
N403HP crashed after cancelling IFR, which he did about 50-100nm before his destination. Not clear why he cancelled IFR so far back. He then flew what looks to me like a pretend visual circuit, for the benefit of Vienna radar, in absolutely solid IMC, and crashed while doing that. He could have popped into LOWW which was 5 mins' flying time away and auto-landed his Jetprop on their ILS. A highly intelligent businessman with a CPL/IR and CFII. What is one supposed to make of that?
Regarding the last one, little is known and those who were flying in the group are not talking, but the appearance is that he crashed while pottering about, presumably in IMC (who actually does a CFIT in VMC, short of flying in a canyon?), before he managed to collect an IFR clearance. I hate to speculate on this one because so little is known but I won't be shocked to learn he had no oxygen and was thus trying to fly low in that area, where airway routes are unavailable below FL150 or whatever.
So it looks like most if not all CFITs of IR holders happen when they are not using their IR.
I am not aware of a CFIT in the UK, or connected with the UK, where one could say "damn I could have fallen for that one". I had a very sticky one on Greece last year, pottering around among hills in ~ 1k viz while trying to collect an IFR clearance from a couple of units which were both snoozing, but I had a GPS running a real topo map.
There have been CFITs in the USA where subtle avionics issues were possibly implicated. For example a pilot I know researched a number of CFITs of aircraft carrying a KMD550 MFD, whose colour terrain/elevation depiction contains absolutely life-threatening defects (basically, missing mountains, due to Jepp having downsampled the elevation data by
averaging adjacent heights, rather than by taking the highest value) and these pilots hit isolated peaks. OK, they were dumb to rely on the kit to fly an off-airway DCT because the MEA concept is then void, but...
Interesting perception - why do you think that?
I repeatedly see people fly very slowly in the circuit. Really slowly, and I am talking about a C152 doing ~60kt.
They also have a very common habit of drifting downwards. Where I am, the cct is at 1100ft, with terrain around the dw/base turn area of 840ft (especially if you fly a wide cct). But I often see people flying the final leg somewhere down on the ground, flying much of it maybe 300ft AGL, very hard to spot, and then they suddenly pop up on very short final. Very few are flying a "glideslope" or a stabilised approach trajectory.
My experience is that PPLs are more likely to fly too fast and get badly behind the aeroplane, rather than fly too slow and nibble the stall.
I don't see that in the circuit. I am sure it does happen, but normally it would result in a go-around. Also, traffic separation issues excepted, there is nothing wrong with flying the circuit too fast. It is only on short final that you have to get it right
The stall related LoC accidents tend to be finals, go-around or climbout, when you have to be fairly near the stall anyhow.
There is no reason to be lower than 1.3 x Vs anywhere before very short final, and being at 1.3 Vs at the base-final turn is IMHO needlessly slow.
3. The proposal for the conversion of foreign IRs seem reasonable, ie no required dual time, just a flight test. However I would like to know what they mean by 'demonstrate' knowledge of Air Law, HPL etc? A chat with the examiner? Just take the written exams?
I agree with your thinking
but it has always meant sitting the written exams.
IMHO, introducing an FAA-style oral exam into the European pilot training machine would scare the living daylights out of most ab initio people especially at the IR/ATPL level, not least because nearly all of them a) sat the exams months or years before they do the flight test and b) did most of the study using a QB.