TobiBS wrote:
My point is, that we still don’t know, what information led to the decision. Or what the general idea behind the “procedure” was. I completely agree with you, that if you know there is 100m fog on a VFR only field, an approach is not what one should try.
There is no relevant information other than the weather at the field at the time. If you don’t get the current weather then you are stupid even more so if you have been previously advised there is fog.
It is a VFR field. There is no “procedure” other than getting visual in accordance with VFR rules.
JasonC wrote:
It is a VFR field. There is no “procedure” other than getting visual in accordance with VFR rules.
Absolutely true, this is why the word procedure was put in quotes by me. But this is the legal point of view and therefore one simple question: Do you always stick to all rules that have been set up in every domain of life, or do you sometimes deviate? And if you deviate, how does your risk assessment work?
I think every pilot deviates from some rules at some point. However, do i deviate and try to conduct an approach at a VFR field in Germany that i would not be legal to attempt at Heathrow with an ILS? No.
In aviation there are some rules that breaking will have no or very limited impact on safety. But some rules really are absolutes.
Tobi, some accidents just speak for themselves and while we will never know exactly why the pilot tried this, it is clear it was a fundamentally bad decision.
I think every pilot deviates from some rules at some point. However, do i deviate and try to conduct an approach at a VFR field in Germany that i would not be legal to attempt at Heathrow with an ILS? No.
In aviation there are some rules that breaking will have no or very limited impact on safety. But some rules really are absolutes.
I completely agree. But this is either your personal or arbitrary groups risk assessment. Hence other people have other views. And the more local we get, the more disturbing these views are. The problem is, that there is no global risk assessment based on facts available, because the law sets up a rule and logically nobody talks openly about breaking the rule. So people become more confident in breaking the rules. So for this case here: There is no statistic about the risk of DIY approaches to VFR airfields, because nobody counts the succesful attempts. So if some guy landed in Trier in fog weather before, he might have the view that it worked in 100% of the cases.
Tobi, some accidents just speak for themselves and while we will never know exactly why the pilot tried this, it is clear it was a fundamentally bad decision.
Definetely. My personal hope is that I keep enough respect of flying to not becoming to bold. Because there are no old bold pilots. ;-)
I completely agree. But this is either your personal or arbitrary groups risk assessment. Hence other people have other views.
Well not really. I don’t consider the maintenance of a journey log as having any contribution to safety whereas the approach ban (let alone no IFR homemade approaches to VFR fields) clearly does. Unfortunately a relaxed aporoach to these sort of rules is why GA has a very poor safety record and reputation vs CAT.
JasonC wrote:
Tobi, some accidents just speak for themselves and while we will never know exactly why the pilot tried this, it is clear it was a fundamentally bad decision.
Obviously, but does that mean that it is of no interest how the pilot arrived at that decision? I don’t think so.
