DaveReidUK, no, if it was equipped with Mode S alone ( so ADS-B) you can determine pretty accurately the location as you can deduct/calculate ground speed and rate of descend pretty accurately ( 25ft increments) that is want I meant.
Now whether r it had one or not, a PLN is just telling us what the pilot filed. not what actually is in the aircraft..

OK, thanks for clarifying.

Though I'm still not sure how knowing only altitude from basic Mode S can help with determining location.

As pilot in Command he can only blame himsel if he operated beyond the limits of his license. Unfortunately he was involved in the death of a totally innocent passenger, if the pilot had survived and been found to be operating outside his qualifications then he would have been looking at a man slaughter charge.

Leave public transport to the true professionals who follow the rules.

That dog is freight, therefore the flight would be illegal if they accept any money unless operated by a commercial pilot in an aircraft on an AOC.

Some of us spent thousands becoming commercial pilots It's time the CAA took an interest and stopped these PPL's taking work illegally off professional pilots.

I agree that the agents and everyone else deserves to be punished, but Dave Ibbotson committed a criminal act in taking on this flight, his social media posts about lack of practise were foolish, he must have known where he stood legally. Henderson and McKay have a lot to answer for, but the pilot is ultimately responsible for his actions. In an earlier post you used the term "he was acting as a pilot" I'd agree, it was an act, he was neither qualified, nor competent to be there, just like all the actors in Top Gun, Airplane 74, 77, The High and the Mighty etc etc. They were acting a part, not competent or qualified as pilots. I know how horrendous commercial pressure on a single pilot, charter operation can be, I've lived it for years, it's where I earn my living, but I also know how protected I am if I say no. I've told customers "I'm not paid enough to die for you." like another poster on this thread I've gladly accepted unemployment rather than face flying for a total arse who won't listen when I tell him something is either illegal or potentially lethal (total arse's next pilot killed him when he hit a mountain flying outside his qualifications and the aircraft flight manual.)

If Ibbotson had made Cardiff he wouldn't have been a hero, just another criminal pilot who hasn't been caught yet. Seems harsh, but I'm responsible for a lot of staff on an AOC struggling because of law breaking like this. I do feel sorry for his family because by his actions he's left them not just with the horrendous loss and mess to deal with, but because he left them with that loss and mess by knowingly breaking the law, and that will tarnish everything for them.

SND

I just checked my (French) life insurance policy. The relevant exclusion is "if the pilot does not have a diploma or licence for the aircraft in question and/or if the aircraft does not possess a valid airworthiness certificate"

So it doesn't say anything about whether the licence is appropriate for commercial operations or anything resembling an AOC, so far as I can tell, does it?

Council Van & SND
Exactly the point I’m making.The PA46 flight was not a one off.
Look at the September 2018 newsletter for the Jersey Aero Club.They had a presence at Air Expo 2018, look what they say about Wingly, “ it’s basic principle is to unite Pilots with people who wish to travel and the conveyance of Cats and Dogs”
Please don’t suggest that this is done for free.
The tip of the iceberg has started to melt.

Check my earlier posts on this thread, and others about cost sharing. Illegal Public Transport has always gone on, The relaxation of rules around cost sharing has created a worse situation. These pilots and aircraft operators are criminals and should be treated as such,. A view I'll share with the CAA on Monday when I start a three day programme of training with them

SND

To some degree we are singing from the same hymn sheet, I would really hope that both McKay & Henderson get dealt with in the most appropriate way by the judicial system.
Now, to break down your contribution into segments :

(1) Dave Ibbotson could have been operating within the privileges of his licence quite legally on the outbound flight because it was Day VFR & he is entitled to do that.

(2) Dave Ibbotson was offered a weekend away in Nantes with all expenses paid if he flew N264DB there & back ( Having your HOTAC paid isn't renumeration, it is an essential need whilst away from home ) Having food & drink purchased for you isn't renumeration either.

(3) If Dave Ibbotson really believed that it was a daytime VFR flight out on Saturday & a daytime VFR flight back on the Monday he was for all intents & purposes going to be flying within the privileges of his licence.

(4) Even if Dave Ibbotson was getting a 'brown envelope' I am sure that the hand that gave him the envelope didn't ask for an invoice that states the payment was for PILOT SERVICES. The organisers of this flight will be too wise to all that.......So who is to say he did get an envelope stuffed with 'readies' ? For all we know he might have been just doing his mate a favour. ( highly unlikely but we can't prove that ).

(5) Dave Ibbotson was qualified as a pilot to fly any SEP up to 5700kg so with the PA46 310 having a MTOW of 2310kg he was 100% legal on paper to be flying it, now whether he was competent to fly it is something we really don't know but I would assume he was 'checked out on type' by someone? It is slightly unfair to imply he was acting ( as in filmstar acting in an aircraft movie ) by twisting my words of him acting as a pilot.

(6) I agree that Dave Ibbotson shouldn't have made a flight at night because it was outside his licence privileges, however he didn't make a conscious decision to commit suicide & take a £15m Footballer with him either.......he probably thought " I can do this & get away with it " but as is painfully obvious he has now paid the ultimate price & his dependents will be paying an even bigger price for his lack of judgement.

(7) The general concensus is that because the McKay's possibly paid Dave Henderson to organise the flight to Nantes & back that Dave Ibbotson was possibly paid by Dave Henderson. For all we know there might not have been any payment made to Dave Ibbotson because as far as I can see nobody has mentioned that Dave Ibbotson did this as a paid job? It has been mentioned that his hotel bill was covered, his subsistence costs have been covered & that the fuel & landing charges have been covered ( None of the known about payments have benefitted Dave Ibbotson financially ).

(8) So at this point everything is conjecture formed on the basis of incomplete information.

(9) Let's just assume for one second that Dave Ibbotson did honestly believe that both sectors were to be daytime VFR flights and accepted it on that basis with his HOTAC all paid for and that no financial incentive was offered ( he voluntarily flew the para aircraft to get free hours so how do we know he didn't agree to fly the PA46 to get some free hours also? ) On that thought he isn't just another criminal pilot who hasn't been caught yet. His only major mistake was allowing peer pressure to push him to do a rather stupid thing by flying outside his licence privileges.

(10) Now comes the real nub.......There are some CPL & ATPL pilots out there that I wouldn't lend a pushbike to, there are some PPL pilots out there that I would lend anything to.....So, it isn't the paperwork that makes the person.......there are some pilots running around on AOC's that haven't got the intelligence to run a bath.
As with everything in life there are naturals in some walks of life & some who are inept in some walks of life, the irony is that a mix of the inept are in with the naturals in both the ATPL/CPL & PPL camps.

Now to look at your remark of : " total arse's next pilot killed him when he hit a mountain flying outside his qualifications and the aircraft flight manual " I don't actually know which CFIT accident you are referring to so I can't comment on that incident ? However guessing you have been in aviation quite a while I am pretty sure you will have heard about Neil Williams flying a Heinkel 1-11 into a mountain that killed him & his wife on a delivery flight? Whoever would have thought he would have made such a huge mistake? Accidents happen to the best of them/us so there but for the grace of god go we.

Easy enough to look up Ibbotson's FAA license in the FAA directory. PPL SEL, issued on the basis of his UK license in 2014 (and doesn't say if the UK license was PPL, CPL or ATPL). No ratings, so yes, single-engine day VFR is all he was licensed to do with an "N" registered aircraft on his FAA license. However as 2D pointed out he could also fly it in the UK on his UK license instead. Do we know what UK license he had? I've read 40 pages of conjecture and assumption but nothing verified.

Thruthseeker;

You are right in a lot of areas.

I was 15 when Neil Williams died, he and my grandfather were well acquainted, Gramps always reckoned Neil was an outstanding pilot and good bloke with a poor grasp of risk. They had both been through ETPS at different times, and from what I saw regularly argued about pushing limits, but even Gramps was very shocked by what happened. As you say, accidents happen, I've had one, fortunately caused by multiple mechanical failures.

Go back through this thread. Look at "common purpose", There was no "common purpose"

This was an N registered aircraft, it should not have been doing what it was doing and DI should not have been flying it on that task or in those conditions. If there was no reward there was no pressure to fly outside his qualifications and ability, because if there was no reward it was being flown for pleasure and experience, therefore no pressure to get to Cardiff that night at all.

And it may not be the paperwork that makes the person, BUT the paperwork can at least help protect the innocent, and the AOC training standards are laid down, you either meet them or you fail.

Two men have died utterly unnecessarily, two families are suffering as a result, but the final decision to fly always rests with the pilot, be he 100 hr ppl or 20 000hr ATPL TRE/IRE, and taking off knowing that the weather is beyond your limits, or you are out of currency, or you are unfamiliar with the aircraft, or you're being pressured because its not a jolly, but a planned, paid charter is not accidental, it is a decision not taken lightly, but usually with due consideration. When that decision is made it is not an accident, it may have been pressured, but it is still the decision of the pilot in command, and his ultimate responsibility. DI will have known the status of his qualifications, and recency, he posted about it on facebook, he will have known how happy he was in the aircraft and how confident he was with it. No matter what threats, cajoling, or promises came from either the McKays or D Henderson he could have said no.

SND

and when all said and done, as much as we can spin our wheels for months, just how do you capture that pilot who will push on? An AOC won't do it, good stick and rudder skills won't do it, ATPL, CPL, IR and ratings to the ying yangs won't do it.

Only last month n the AAIB bulletin can we read of an experienced instructor killing himself and student on a trip to the Cotswolds in the murk and muck. You only have to read another thread on this forum about the accident in Spain to see how other experienced pilots get themselves killed [one the author of the CAA's GA Safety leaflet, as was, and very pro-active in aviation safety]. We can all find others getting caught in CFIT perhaps the two most recent and high profile being a A109 in central London and a A139 in Norfolk or even a large part of a family getting killed in the hills of Wales in a Squirrel.

Being wise after the fact isn't very helpful and what is perhaps more helpful are checks, balances and control ahead of time especially as it relates to flights where considerable pressure can be brought to bear. If we can find so many examples within days and weeks of these accidents it should not have been too difficult to find it beforehand. That nothing was done should be the important question as, if nothing else, taking action against a dead man is rather unproductive.

May I gently enquire whether it is known if the loss of 'radar contact' was loss of primary or secondary?

Ok. let me play the armchair incident investigator , the report of loss of radar contact at 2300ft was made by Jersey ATC. the unit controlling the aircraft at the time . , they have apparently secondary only and I do not know at which altitude their filters are set at .
There at least 10 other radars covering the area including bot French and the UK air defense primary radar, and also a few local Air Force and Aeronavale /Navy lairbases in the aerea . In the hours / max a day that followed , an investigation of the recordings normally takes place to see if : 1 ) you can identify the aircraft , and 2) where the returns ended

Now to reply to DaveReidUK question :
With a mode S return you can very accurately calculate the ground speed and the final rate of decent and also see if the rate is steady or increasing etc.., with that you then have an angle and can determine approximately the point of impact if the aircraft continued on the same track of course .But my experience is that in this scenario , you normally do not see much deviation anymore the last 1000 ft . therefore you should be on the spot within 1 or 2 square miles . I noticed the BEA said it will be concentrating the research within 4 square miles, so here you go .

When I was working there, things like this were was done by club members for other club members. Quite different to the Wingly model. No idea if that it still the case.

The private search vessel chartered by Mr Mearns to do the search is the FPV Morven
It moved form Southampton to Guernsey last week
Now it has left port this morning and is currently North West of Alderney
See
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais...sel:FPV_MORVEN
Click on "past track" button to go to the live map
You will need to close/move the vessel pop up picture on live map to get the unobstructed view of the course

The AAIB have chartered the GeoOcean III which left Ostend this morning
This ship is currently immediately to the North East of the Morven on the map

I'm still struggling to understand how that can be so. Can you explain further ?

You said previously that you were talking about Mode S and not ADS-B, but basic Mode S only gives you surveillance ID (squawk) and altitude (DF5 and DF4, respectively).

So, yes, you can calculate RoD, but the download data contains no velocity information so I don't see how it's possible to derive GS.

No doubt that's true, but the estimate of final position could well have come from primary radar (possibly military?), rather than SSR.

I just don't get it...Apart from the tragedy of it all,

Single-engine (piston, I gather?) day VFR flight plan in deepest winter on a mucky day with a pretty dire forecast setting off at dusk across lots of open sea with a night landing into an International airport.

The PIC has been reported allegedly not to be licensed nor have the training to have operated like this, even flying solo, let alone couple that carrying a very VIP high profile client basically paying someone for a ticket to fly.

A couple of winters ago near me here in the West Country on a completely foul weather day a family of 4 were killed near Dunkeswell in a Malibu N regn.
The weather was so bad and clagged that morning I cannot fathom why the chap took off with his wife and kids from Surrey to attempt the flight across country - even EXT airport was IMC that morning. The pilot was IMC rated