Pace
Since you have asked…
First of all, what a terrible tragedy to a beautiful family. How very sad.
Having lived a large part of my life in that area, learned to fly at Dunks many moons ago, and spent a large amount of time flying from and hanging around the airfield I have a little, local (if ancient) knowledge.
As a caveat, I also realise how easy it is to pontificate after the event from the comfort of a chair.
Having said all that, I have never (sadly) flown one but the PA46 is a very capable machine and must necessarily be very well equipped; it is definitely not your average club 150 and surely not the sort of aeroplane in which one would try and crawl in under the clag. The pilot’s experience is unclear but it is extremely unlikely he would be flying that aircraft without instrument flying experience and qualification. So I am puzzled; looking at the weather for that day, assuming a serviceable aircraft, there is no way he should have been at that level in that area. Indeed he would most likely have been talking to Dunks on the radio and they would have advised him of the conditions on the airfield.
Personally I very much like to think that I would have been in the ‘shut the curtains’ camp. IF one were to get caught out and find oneself in that situation in that area, knowing the terrain and hazards of descending with no procedures, surely there should be no hesitation in simply going to Exeter and descending on the ILS or other procedure –forget the other airfields up on the Blackdowns mentioned before. If picking someone up from Dunks it is only a 20 minute (car) journey to Exeter. Alternatively, as suggested above, descend till visual on the procedure and then try and go back to Dunks. Indeed I have done that before: failed to get in there on a direct track, back to Exeter, ILS till visual then follow the A30 up to Honiton and turn left up a valley to find the airfield. In an aircraft like that, almost certainly equipped with moving map etc., I just cannot understand why this happened, assuming a serviceable aircraft.
Having said all that, we have probably all done things when flying which we may, in retrospect, realise were unwise. Mostly we get away with it…….
How awful.
I also find it hard to disagree with your comments about the job creation scheme known as EASA, although I would probably extend it to Eurocontrol as well.