CAAAD
I disagree with you about the AAIB's recommendations concerning obstacles (and think they should have gone further in some respects) but I agree entirely with you that they should have looked more closely into the factors which regularly lead to such accidents. In particular, but not exhaustively, the matters mentioned by puntosaurus very early in the thread.
TC
He was not (repeat) under any time, financial pressure to get to his destination.
I disagree, for the reasons already suggested by others.
He had been told by the customer to forget it.
He had already decided to press on AFTER his principal had told him not to bother.
That is the same customer/principal who AFTER being told by the pilot at 0753:
"Over Elstree no holes I’m afraid hdg back to Redhill least we tried chat in 10" then sent him a text two minutes later saying:
"Battersea is open." The AAIB concluded, correctly in my opinion, that it was likely that the customer's message led to the pilot (wrongly) deciding to divert to Battersea instead of continuing in VMC to to Redhill.
Report 2.3.2:
The flying time from Redhill Aerodrome to overhead London Heliport is short, so the operational advantage of waiting at the heliport rather than the aerodrome is not obvious. The pilot might have thought that the client intended to drive to the heliport and that to position the helicopter there in advance of the client’s arrival would be advantageous from a commercial perspective. This seemed likely given that the pilot appeared to decide to divert to the heliport immediately after he learned from the client that it was open.
For the avoidance of any misunderstanding, I am not defending his decision to do so.
For some reason, you believe that those who disagree with your approach either haven’t been listening to you or don’t understand. I suspect most posters agree with most of what you've said about this accident. However, not everyone agrees that the factors which led to it are as simple and straightforward as you and some others believe. There are other factors which need to be considered and addressed. (I'm not referring to "subliminal psychoanalytical, interdevelopmental breakdown.")
There have been differences of opinion regarding texting while flying in VMC but everyone appears to be agreed that the pilot exercised poor judgment when he left VMC and, as ShyTorque said earlier, made the fatal mistake of descending into fog lifting into low cloud. Those, such as Piltdown Man, who have argued that there should be more careful examination of the factors which may have led this pilot to do what he did (and many other pilots before him to make similar poor judgments) have been wrongly accused failing to understand and by one poster of 'defending' the pilot. They have done neither.
John R81
To me that facts that led to him dropping down through the sucker-hole are interesting in that they led to that decision. Part of the investigation and something to learn from for sure, but separate from what happened down below cloud.
I agree.
FL