And if he had that and had it hooked in why did he loose controls with what appears to be a case of the leans.
Sorry MJ. I wasn't specifically refering to this case. It seem obvious that he wasn't using the auto pilot, though he could of course been using it and turned it off thinking it had failed. Very unlikely though.
I was making a more general point.
As a VFR only pilot I could not see myself being even remotely tempted to make an IFR approach because I could pull the chute if it went wrong. After all if it all goes wrong I'm going to be very close to the ground and I'm going to have an aircraft which is written off at best.
On the other hand if I figured the autopilot could fly me to 200ft on an ILS and the cloud base was 700ft, and the only thing I had to worry about was an autopilot failure in the few minutes it takes to make the approach, I could see how that might be tempting. I wouldn't do it, but I could see how someone would be tempted and I have a feeling that a fair amount of that might go on. No real evidence, just a feeling from some of the accident reports that I've read.