As with I am sure most here, my initial thoughts are for the families concerned. My second thoughts concern some of the decisions made that night. My third thoughts stem from some of the revelations in this thread concerning what appears to me to be 'pilots' acting totally outside of the remit of an appropriate licence.

With regard to the second, the actual direct end cause of the accident is as yet uncertain. However, there seems little doubt that at least two people should never have been in that situation in the first place. As someone posted earlier, single-engine flying is not inherently unsafe, nor is a single-engine flight at night or over water. But add them all together, and the risk factor increases. Add in icing conditions and the risk factor goes up more. Add in a (potential) lack of pilot experience of the combination of aircraft type and the conditions, and it goes off the scale. We will never know the reasons for some of the decisions that were made, but most of us know the pressure some people can exert and not everyone finds it easy to say no. This especially if you put yourself in the position of someone who possibly should not really have been where they were and didn't have the financial means to stay there. There are very few here who have had years sitting at the pointy end who haven't at some time been pressured in one way or another. There are times it takes a lot to say no, and as other incidents have unfortunately shown, there are times people have failed to say no to the person sitting next to them, and have paid the ultimate price.

Like a lot of others here, I started off longer ago than I care to remember, with a combination of a freshly-minted PPL, youth, big cojones and a limited understanding of just how easily things can go wrong. I was very, very lucky to have had an FI who told me that he'd beat me senseless with a broken rudder if I ever so much as thought about taking any passenger anywhere under any circumstances until I'd got a good few more hours, learned the hard way that things can go t*ts up, and added at the very least some instrument and night instruction. Happily, I went on to do a lot more than that. Equally happily, the way things have gone and are going, I can now stick to gardening and painting the living room. Again.

With regard to the third point, having been out of the loop to a degree, I am as amazed as others to learn about what seems to be blatant abuse of the system. I am unfortunately a little less surprised to see just how little is being done about it. As always, I am afraid, those who play a straight bat are the ones who pay and ironically, who recreive the most attention from the authorities. More and tighter legislation? Of course, but someone has to enforce it. We also have to realise that not everyone plays by the book. You cannot blame the passengers in any way, shape or form here. Almost anyone getting on any aircraft will have near zero idea about the necessary qualifications, and as someone said earlier, to the average person, 70 hours sounds like a lot.

Obviously (to us anyway), something needs to be done. Unfortunately, I fear it may take the sort of event none of us want to see, before someone in a position of authority wakes up to what is happening out there in the real world. I won't hold my breath.

An awful lot of limited companies are set up by Chartered Accountants or Solicitors as 'off the shelf companies for clients to use. When that happens the initial director(s) are referred to as nominees and then, when the company is used for trading, they resign and the person(s) taking control of the company becomes director. To suggest that the formation 'director' being a nominee makes the actions of the company 'doubtful is misleading at best... whatever may have happened later, many many companies start out with a nominee director.

True, but it is also worth considering the fallout from a crash where the legalities were questionable. For sure, there are two people here who no longer have an opinion on that but there are plenty more who will now suffer the absolute objectivity of insurance companies and a legal system for a number of years. Perhaps, as pilots, we should consider the potential outcomes of our actions, even if we have ended-up in a box, six-foot under. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always have the thought about my wife, children, dog and their inheritance.

Cows getting bigger
 

The crowdfunding page to recover Ibottson's body has now reached £104,182 from 5871 donations!

(my emphasis)

I don't doubt for a minute that there have been plenty of display pilots following the Shoreham court case with interest. But the use of the term accident is worth a second look. Insurance is there to pay for accidents. When does an air crash go beyond being an accident?

Leaving courts out of things, the common link between Shoreham and the Sala/Ibbotson example is the question as to whether the actions of either pilot went beyond merely having an accident, and actually entered into the territory of being reckless. Reckless goes beyond being merely careless/negligent and deals with cases with the bad outcome was reasonably foreseeable, but ignored or disregarded by the pilot.

By entering the loop too low and not escaping from it when he failed to achieve the gate height, the argument is being made that Andy Hill was reckless rather than careless. Likewise, if it transpires as is widely suggested that colour-blind David Ibbotson conducted a flight at night in icing conditions without even so much as a night rating or any form of valid instrument qualification, then he might well be judged reckless.

David Ibbotson won't end up in court, but when it comes to insurance, many insurers will argue that their policy is there to pay out to the careless, but not to the reckless.

Display pilots shouldn't give up on the back of Shoreham, any more than any of us should stop flying with passengers. But it does up the ante to make sure that we do things by the book.

That is because we are held to a higher standard than anything else.
And when it's gross pilot error, we are villains.
When we go down fighting, we are heroic.

​​​​​Aviation is still something that defies belief in a lot of people.
I know I still "how the f*** does that thing fly?!" when I see an A380 in the skies.

A short study of aircraft movements and a few discreet questions around problem airfields would soon identify the grey charter operators.
These operators don't just do one or two flights a year.
PPL pilots accumulating large hours between medicals would also help identify specific pilots for some gentle questions once their name pops up on a flight plan.

Proactive enforcement is not difficult.

If you enforce this, there are easy way to go around this as hours are self declarative for PPL .
And even if you regulate that you have to bring a cerified log book when going to renew your medical , Pilots log books can be altered easily and even the highly regulated aircraft maintenance books can be "tuned in" to fit the purpose if you own the aircraft,
as to the name on a flight plan , not sure a data base on this is possible, but if it did and you wanted to avoid being flagged, just phone the plans or file on internet and write what you want on that field.
Do not underestimate the ingenuity of those that want to beat the system.
Spending a bit of time in Africa opens the mind to what is possible :E

That's because our errors often result in death.
Because of that pilots, even GA pilots, have a responsibility, they are in control of a machine that can do serious damage if handled incorrectly.
In my opinion the majority of pilots do take this responsibility seriously.

The problem here is that the pilots doing the flying are the guys desperate to fly full stop and will take any opportunity. They will listen to the men behind the scenes taking the money saying that its all OK and that its a loop hole, a grey area, a private flight whatever the excuse is and go and do it. I have another friend flying a Pilatus that I have warned recently about the type of flying he is doing and I could see it go in one ear and out the other as the seduction of being able to fly for free is so great. He assured me because it was on the CI register that it was not covered by the CAA and AOC requirements. Until we can make the pilots understand and learn to say NO we are on hiding to nowhere and blaming the regulator for lack of oversight is unfair......

The Guernsey Register (2-xxxx) make quite interesting reading, not least or the wide scope of aircraft and companies represented.

https://www.2-reg.com/wp-content/upl...e_20190201.pdf

I defer to experts on the legal aspects of the CI/Guernsey register {Jersey only has a few aircraft registered I believe [ZJ-xxx])

I would assume that many of these would be registered in Guernsey due to the favourable tax benefits, looking at the aircraft types and companies listed quite a few of those would probably be on temporary registration between leases.

A previous boss of mine had this on his wall, as true today as it was when written in the 1930s:

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....22ea3352fa.jpg

... and, of course, the only sources of decent paid income to fly, the airlines, saying they will not even consider you unless you have n hundred or n thousand of those expensive hours in your logbook.

Used to do weekend skydiving, we never paid our pilots but there was a queue of those offering their services, for the hours. Never occurred to actually charge them, but on reflection could have even done so.

Yes certainly, and I am not the one who is going to cast the first stone here. We all (or at least quite a few of us) have performed one or the other flight with questionable legality at some point during our careers. Like helping out somewhere without asking too many questions. Sometimes an opportunity is too nice to say NO right away. Like a weekend trip to France with all expenses covered for in a plane that I couldn't afford to rent myself. Who can resist a temptation like this, especially if everybody tells you it is "OK".

I have been ramp checked on countless occasions (mostly when performing legitimate commercial work, rarely when doing "private" flights - it really should be the other way round!) but only once ever have the passengers been asked: "Who has arranged this flight and who is paying for your ticket?". If that would be the first question asked by every ramp inspector then the kind of flying that we talk about here would dry out within a year.

But this accident is not only about the legal aspects of the flight itself. It is even more about flying outside one's license privileges and outside one's competence. And here I completely fail to understand how someone can accept an "it's OK". When I don't have a night rating I do not depart at night. No matter what people tell me. It can never be "OK". And there is not a single pilot out there who does not know that.

What is the general theory here as to where David Ibbotson's body is, as I believe there is a crowdfunding page set up to raise enough money to try and find him?

On other forums the fact that the AAIB have called off the search and trying to raise the wreck has caused an outcry on the grounds of inequality and that if it hadn't been Sala that they found, it would be ongoing.

His family don't want to give up but do they honestly think they will find him after all this time?

And one last final question- it's a difficult one I know... who is really responsible for this tragedy? Should someone be held to account?