Dick,
Can I kindly ask for your opinion on this following accident? (Anyone else who wishes to make comment on it please feel free to do so. I apologise to anyone that may feel this post is a bit of a thread drift but I feel there is a connection to the topic at hand.)
On the 11th of December, 1991 a CFIT accident occurred involving a Be400 Beechjet registered as N25BR near Rome, Georgia, USA. The NTSB Summary Report (NTSB/AAR-02/01/SUM) can be found here:
http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online.../AAR92-01S.pdf (I am sorry for the low image quality of the document but it is still easily legible, it just doesn’t look neat).
A short summary of the accident is as follows:
(Page 2)
The CVR transcript indicated that the airplane's engines were started at 0930. Shortly thereafter, the captain told the first officer that given the prevailing weather conditions, "We could run out under the edge but there’s no edge anymore." The flight crew taxied the airplane and commenced takeoff on runway 1 at 0937 under visual flight rules (VFR).
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(Page 2)
At 0937:13, the captain contacted the Atlanta Air Route Traffic Control Center (Atlanta Center) informing them that the airplane had just departed Rome, was flying under VFR, and was "looking for a clearance over to Huntsville." Atlanta Center gave the crew a transponder identification “squawk” code and told them to maintain VFR because "we have traffic four and five right now southeast of Rome. [We will] have something for you later."
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(Page 3)
At 0940:07, the captain directed the first officer to fly "back to the right." At this point, the CVR transcript indicates that the pilots recognized that the airplane was close to obscured terrain. The CVR stopped recording at 0940:55. At 0941:21, Atlanta Center attempted to contact the airplane but that attempt and all subsequent attempts were unsuccessful.
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(Page 3)
Rescuers located the wreckage of the airplane and found that the airplane was destroyed and all nine passengers and crew had been killed.
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(Page 3/4)
[The aircraft] It was not equipped, nor was it required to be equipped, with a ground proximity warning system (GPWS).
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(Page 7)
The captain elected to depart Rome under VFR at a time when, as he knew or should have known, the ceiling obscured the tops of nearby terrain in all quadrants, leaving only a few miles in all directions in which he could legally and safely fly VFR.
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(Page 8)
If the captain had requested an IFR clearance from the Rome airport to Huntsville, ATC rules would have mandated that the airplane depart within a specified 5-minute period. However, if the passengers did not return in time to allow a departure within this period, the clearance would then have been voided. If the captain had then attempted to obtain a second clearance from Rome, it is likely, because other aircraft were present in the non-radar environment, that he would have encountered a delay possibly as long as 30 minutes. Therefore, the captain may have believed that the only alternative available to quickly leave Rome was to depart under rules that would not have required a departure clearance, i.e., VFR, attempt to proceed to Huntsville, and receive the clearance once aloft.
I would like to know what factor or factors you feel contributed to this particular accident.