GAir student dies in first solo night flight in Portugal
 

Heyo! Just heard of this myself. Can't find any english sources but you can google it (Cant post due to low count). Pakistani student died due to low visibility coming in, his last message was apparently "I can't see the runway." This isn't the first time this has happened with GAir I believe.

Shouldn't there be a genuine change in how these programs are done? I believe pushing the night training to after Instrument Flights would help students a lot. I know of some aviation school that have changed it like that, and made them do the solo in a MEP for the sake of safety. Anyone else had the same?

The problem on this accident is, why the firemen took that long time to find him... last contact with AFIS at 21:44, and they found the student at nearly 1 am...
And apparently the flight instructor saw the aircraft falling down...

About the program, it's 5 night flights... 2 are circuit patterns, 1 is 1-hour navigation, other one for 1-h check, and last one is for solo (5x Take off and landing)

About G-Air... hmm sorry L3... the vast majority of their students are foreigners... all portuguese guys use to avoid that school... because there are a lot of stories to tell...

Yeah. Not sure if its the same flight school. But my old school sold a a Piper Seninole to them a few years back. Apparently on one mission they were using auto pilot and had a trim runaway. When they disengaged the AP the ACFT went into a full nose down attitude. They couldn't recover and I think smashed into the sea. No survivors. Like I said not sure if was this school, just know it was in Portugal.

I suspect the accident Malkovitch refers to was OO-TML which was leased to AAE (CAE) in Evora and conducting a training sortie for another CAE owned FTO, Dutch based NLS? PA34 Seneca V that ended up in a field near Sete due to suspected runaway trim. I recall the parents of the Dutch student requesting help online in an attempt to discover what happened as information was not very forthcoming. The final report is now available online however.

Is this G-Air/L3 facility the one UK integrated students now attend?

It's not all that uncommon, sadly.

I recall back in 2002, a young pilot who had just got his PPL in FL, did a flight over to the Bahamas. He then took off over the ocean on a clear, moonless night. Black sky / black sea rapidly led to total loss of spacial orientation and he nosedived into the sea seconds later. It can happen. :sad: