Ibra wrote:
How about the reverse he was described as “very good pilot”, “very cautious pilot”, “very through”, “very careful”…then found on a hill doing IMC bellow MSA?
It happens. An article in the August 1993 edition of “Flying” magazine called this “SLOJ” (sudden loss of judgement). A couple of sources of “slojy” behaviour the article pointed out was “the Proximity Rule” (I certainly have noticed how it seems that there’s a disproportionate number of weather related accidents that happen within 5 minutes flying time of the destination, in other words normally careful pilots can suffer a loss of judgement when their goal is so near. Had they taken off and 5 minutes later it was evident the weather wasn’t good enough, they would have turned around and landed. But they are just 5 minutes from their destination on a 3 hour flight, they might just go for it.
I know I have fallen for that one. Of course, I actually made it, but in hindsight, my decision to press on for the last 5 minutes of the flight instead of diverting to the airfield maybe 10 minutes behind me was certainly a poor one, when I arrived at one end of the runway with a deluge arriving at the opposite end (and said storm required people to hang onto parked aircraft as it had a very strong outflow) but the lure of your destination being in visual range, and very close, is an incredibly strong one.
