A number of people have mentioned the need for a functioning autopilot.
Normal procedure in a PA46 (in anything but light icing) is to hand fly the aircraft … to avoid ice-bridging of the elevator that can occur when flown using the autopilot.
CAUTION SPECULATIONS AHEAD
Daily Mail reports the trip was originally planned to be done at daylight and was delayed into dark?
What if, license, medical condition and skills of the pilot would have been fine for VFR-Day x hours before?
What if, decision making was based on knowledge of outdated weather data due to the delay?
What if, the pilots mind was blocked by his reported £18k debts, independent of he was paid or not?
What if, the pilot had i.e. vision issues at night and was not able to communicate that, cancel the flight?
Btw Does CAA licenses carry a VFR Night rating with respective training obligation?
It all condenses down to one of these long chains of failure, or?
On GA types it is in the POH to hand fly in icing (but almost nobody does) but it isn’t because you get bridging on autopilot; it is because if you get bridging (or any other more general form of icing which results in marginal control authority) you won’t know about it until the point where the plane goes out of control. Whereas if you hand fly you should notice the impending doom and execute Plan B 
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Yes. Another good benefit. Unfortunately in the leisure fraternity the use of DSC is not as good as it could be (I think due to the poor intergration of DSC with chart plotters, and not all leisure VHFs having DSC) but you are absolutely correct with commercial vessels. In any event the various coastguard agencies along the channel are very good at relaying any PANs or Maydays and requesting help from any vessels on a listening watch so if only you can get off a Mayday call and have an electronic means of location and survive the ditching I think the chances of being recovered and often surprisngly quickly are pretty good. The trouble is you probably have less than half an hour in the water this time of year without appropriate protection which is probably not long enough unless you are very lucky. With appropriate clothing and a raft I think you have a very good chance indeed, but only with electronic means of location.
The Daily Trash sure gets the dirt reliably
This whole job is looking worse by the hour.
Peter wrote:
The Daily Trash sure gets the dirt reliablyThis whole job is looking worse by the hour.
Peter wrote:
The Daily Trash sure gets the dirt reliably
“Sala’s flight went missing near Guernsey an hour after take off after ice either became clogged in the propeller or affecting the wings”
On thing I find surprising is that I never heard on emergencies that involve forced landing / ditching to turn the ELT on BEFORE reaching the ground.
This should give more time to transmit position, and won’t rely on it self activating or not. If your aircraft sinks shortly after ditching, you’ll still have transmitted some positions too.
Noe wrote:
On thing I find surprising is that I never heard on emergencies that involve forced landing / ditching to turn the ELT on BEFORE reaching the ground.This should give more time to transmit position, and won’t rely on it self activating or not. If your aircraft sinks shortly after ditching, you’ll still have transmitted some positions too.
“Clogged in the propeller” made me smile too
Activating the ELT before landing makes sense. My PLB has a coiled aerial that springs out when activated, and I think the label says not to do it in a confined space. To be honest, in an emergency, I wouldn’t be reading the disclaimer. In fact, the PLB/ELT is probably vastly more accurate than tracking 7700 or goniometry on 121,5
