I would discount all the comments about the pilot being ‘conservative’ in his wx assessments and his flying. It’s human nature not wanting to diss someone who just died. Del mortuis nihil nisi bene. To my mind the extra training he – laudably – undertook may actually have been his undoing. He may very well have thought ’I’m better trained than the average, I can do this’ – until he couldn’t.
Snoopy wrote:
Vref wrote:
.For myself I know my risk assessment is different when I fly with pax and my own kids even more…….
That is concerning. Imagine the horror you would bring to your family and kids. If you wouldn’t fly with your family, don’t fly alone!
Common Snoopy…you are smarter than that!!! I will leave my further comments on this sad thread…..RIP
Ibra wrote:
Most airliners prohibit cancel IFR and fly VFR unless they have exemptions, so those comparaisons are rather moot…
I wasn’t referring to ifr/vfr ops but that there is no point to deviate from those procedures meant to protect you.
In fact, he seemed to not have much experience with landing in poor weather.
This should be a formal module in IR single pilot training. The course should devote a bit less time on the fetish of NDB holds, and a bit more time in knowing how to brief the approach lighting system and how to fly the transition from Category 1 DA to visual, with the relevant threats.
Not applicable to this case as it was a cloud break procedure. Wolkendurchstossverfahren
Snoopy wrote:
That is concerning. Imagine the horror you would bring to your family and kids. If you wouldn’t fly with your family, don’t fly alone!
I totally agree with this. My risk assessment is always the same and I try hard to divide emotions from reasoning. Risk assessment should be purely mental exercise, no emotions involved.
There are a couple of cloud breaking procedures in Austria like that one, i.e. St Johann, Wiener Neustadt, and others. They are essentially just meant to help you into the valley if the ceiling is high enough to proceed VFR after the MAP. In case of Zell the missed approach course diverts a couple of degrees to the right / south, which is perfectly fine to enable you to climb straight ahead in the valley, but it brings you a couple hundred meters to the south of the field and it is well possible that in very bad weather you don’t see the runway. He followed the MA first, but then, for some reason, apparently decided to give it a try anyway, resulting in a descent and turn into a wide left curve, which would have brought him to runway 26 if he had at least completed that. But for some reason he must have lost his faith in his own dangerous actions, and turned north again, where now was no valley any more.
I had a similar situation recently flying to LOAN / Wiener Neustadt, and I had perfect, sunny weather all the way until I realized the entire Austrian area, beginning in Salzburg to the East was covered in fog, and low clouds, which was worse than anticipated. I had Wien Schwechat set up as alternate, and as soon as I got the METAR of LOAN I knew the ceiling was below VFR minima, and immediately diverted to Schwechat. I didn’t want to mess around with my daughter with me.
The really tragic thing here is that the pilot seemed to have been a cautious pilot, and he was very cautious in his flight preparation the days before, calling Zell am See and weather service multiple times, trying to figure out if and when he could fly, eventually even prescheduling the flight to a day earlier because he anticipated the weather to be worse on Sunday.
The report says that maybe because of having successfully completed approaches to Zell am See in marginal weather before, he perhaps was overly confident to be able to do it again. Eventually he he drilled three holes into the proverbial cheese:
The first hole was to not immediately request vectors to Salzburg when he heard the METAR of LOAN up in FL 110. The second hole was to somehow try a VFR self assembled circle to land in the midst of the missed approach procedure. And the third hole, sealing his fate, was to doubt his actions and turn north.
This is exactly the kind of confirmation bias spiral that is so dangerous: each wrong decision spiraling you down into an even worse situation, until you are are out of options. It is a perfect example of how dangerous get-there-itis can be, and even worse, it can render all previously applied cautiousness futile.
The one main item we can learn from that accident is to have very clear criteria to divert or turn around. And to stick to them, no matter what you may think up there.
EuroFlyer wrote:
The one main item we can learn from that accident is to have very clear criteria to divert or turn around. And to stick to them, no matter what you may think up there.
Indeed, that is the problem with cloud-breaks unless you have a stop-loss and exit strategy it will be on pure hope & luck
In this report it’s highly unlikely the pilot was clear of clouds at the MAPT
However given that there is 10km between MAPT and THR (enough to keep anyone busy and long cross-country time and make weather observations on two points worthless), I can imagine a scenario where the pilot is clear of clouds at the MAPT, flies hopelessly to find the runway, can’t see it at the THR, resumed the missed segment, flies downwind, spot the runway on downwind (or by mistake some road between clouds), try to circle it and land, lose it in clouds, turned toward the missed segment and hit terrain on the climb…
Sorry it’s a long scenario but it gives some dynamics and quirks of “VFR flying in IMC” with no clear strategy aside from hope & luck that’s more likely to kill an experienced IFR pilot (cautious VFR pilot tend will LOC-I or safely call it off way before CFIT stage)
