... how would you expect a 100 hour pilot, to use triple X's example, to be able to start a PA31 and manage the fuel system and just to line up the cheese, in the dark?
Biggles78,
You are talking about a situation where the pilot is unfamiliar with the aircraft and/or is inexperienced. This has nothing to do with whether the aircraft is multiengined or not. Those things you listed could apply equally for a SE pilot contemplating a mercy flight in a SE machine with which he is unfamiliar.
The point of my post was to address the view - expressed by a number of posters to this thread - that flight of a ME aircraft by a SE pilot is too risky for a mercy flight situation.
I demonstrated, by way of the probabilities, that this factor,
by itself, should not stop a mercy flight. That is, the risks posed by an SE pilot flying a ME aircraft were tiny in comparison to the risk that the person would die.
Naturally, and I thought this would have been too obvious to need spelling out, there may be
other risk factors such as night, low pilot experience, etc.
This thread has shown that a number of posters are having difficulties getting their heads around the fundamentals of mercy flights. To this end, the thread has been useful at encouraging thought and discussion.
Those fundamentals are:
1. Somebody will most likely die if the flight is not undertaken;
2. No other option for evacuating the person is available within the time available;
3. Some rule(s) must be broken;
Mercy flights will thus always involve some added risk. The challenge is to identify and accurately weigh those risks.
If you have ANY form of contact with the outside world...
kalavo, you are talking about a situation where you are confronted with a sick or injured person. This is NOT the situation that is the subject of this thread. To make it applicable to this thread, you need to imagine that the person will probably die if YOU don't fly them to where they can be treated - and that to do so, you must break some rules.
You can't assume the RFDS can get to you in time. YOU may have to make that mercy flight.