JasonC wrote:
Why do you think the autopilot was INOP?(…)
Hard to see how it passed an annual without one.
Why? AFAIK an AP is not an airworthiness requirement.
WarleyAir wrote:
I also always had a ‘head light’ type thing – does everybody !?
Yes, and I wear it at night. It lives in my flight bag and I have three of them stuck to my iPad holder with some Velcro that can illuminate the entire panel and provide a map light if need be. The panel lights in the two airplanes I mostly fly are quite good, but they can and do fail and also don’t illuminate the engine instruments well enough. IMO headlamp is must for SEP night ops.
Don’t know as much as some of you chaps but sure working AP not mandatory.
The one in our N Reg Arrow didn’t work, but it was placarded ‘AP INOP’..
Probably less obvious from the report but any confirmation if the pilot had any qualification to fly by night/instrument (e.g. night rating, full IR, IMCr)?
The one in our N Reg Arrow didn’t work, but it was placarded ‘AP INOP’..
Common on the UK GA scene, whose decrepitude is exceeded only by the Spanish GA scene 
The reason is that autopilots are usually complicated to troubleshoot and usually expensive to fix. You need an avionics tech who understands the signals; not just a wireman, and these are extremely rare.
Probably less obvious from the report but any confirmation if the pilot had any qualification to fly by night/instrument (e.g. night rating, full IR, IMCr)?
It does not mention the IMCR or IR.
The Night Qualification is an interesting one. If you have an EASA PPL without the NQ, and get a 61.75 piggyback FAA PPL, you can, I believe, fly an N-reg at night – because every FAA PPL has a NQ as standard (with rare exceptions mentioned earlier). This is an obscure interpretation and also touches on PA46 type ratings and such like.
However, if flying on the FAA license privileges (as Ibbotson would have been during at least the French airspace bit) you cannot carry passengers unless you have met the FAA night passenger carriage currency requirement, which is 3 takeoffs and 3 landings at/after official sunset plus 1 hour within the last 3 months. An FAA IR does not change this.
An EASA IR circumvents the above requirement but only if the PPL and the IR are issued by the airspace owner i.e. France. But Ibbotson clearly didn’t have any IR.
The reasons why this flight should not have taken place are almost endless to the point that it would be quicker to list the rules not broken and the good airmanship shown.
Autopilot use generally isn’t taught. The kind of flying that the pilot did regularly (dropping meat missiles) wasn’t the sort of flying that involved autopilot usage. The balance of probabilities was the AP simply wasn’t used because the pilot wasn’t accustomed to the AP on that aircraft.
I’ve only ever had one instructor teach me on autopilot use (that was for my multi rating, and the instructor flew an MD-11 as a day job where autopilot use is encouraged).
I think NQ is the relevant bit rather than the IR, he did plan to fly VFR and flew mainly to remain VMC but he did not have planned to fly by night at all (foced to fly late due to Sala delays), so probably the only backup light source he has is a SD tablet…
Having a recent IR experience would have compensated for NQ currency in a good VMC night with some visual clues, but flying VFR by night in marginal weather with no visual clues is operationally complex and prone to human errors even for instrument pilots, I guess if he had any “IR experience” it could have been safer if he just flew it IFR (legally or not)? Or better just divert to the 6 places around?
AP engaged & “remain VMC” does not mix well, I usually pre-set and test the AP before getting into IMC, just flipping that AP switch in IMC without a think about it does give some surprises ;)
I have flown over the Channel at 9pm in September, having missed the Shoreham closing time (due to French ATC strikes around Cannes; I seem to attract those on my trips) and heading for Biggin Hill instead, and it isn’t “VFR” by any stretch of the imagination. There was a bit of IMC around but there was no daylight left anyway for a VFR flight lower down. It was 100% pitch black. You may as well be in a cave.
To get away with it, the pilot either has to be very good at hand flying in IMC, or use the autopilot. And anybody who has an AP and knows how to use it will use it. Accordingly, most long distance VFR and nearly all IFR flight is done on autopilot. And then you don’t just lose control.
