It appears to have been a training flight!
There was a similar one in the UK some years ago. Both survived due to hitting slowly rising terrain. The student suffered serious injuries (many broken bones especially legs). They woke up surrounded by the remains of the PA38. The FI did better and made some astonishing posts on the main UK GA chat site, justifying his non-use of GPS to show how to do it properly the WW1 RAF way, until someone reminded him that he is likely to be facing a personal injury claim from the student. IIRC he was never seen again after that. It does amaze me what stuff a PIC survivor of a fatal crash is willing to post on forums, with another case posting that he was on his laptop at the time of the crash.
It is really dumb for the FI to not use a GPS.
There was a similar one in Canada,
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2014/a14o0217/a14o0217.pdf
Summary: faulty VOR (>20 degrees off), pilots got lost and ran out of fuel and crashed. The pilots had a working GPS each within easy reach (one had an aviation navigation app on their phone).
Two smartphones were recovered intact and powered on. The pilot’s phone had an aviation GPS application installed. The passenger’s cell phone was also capable of GPS reception. Examination of both phones indicated that use of the GPS functions had not been attempted
I really fail to understand that once you realise you’re lost (and they knew they were lost for some time) you wouldn’t at least try your phone’s GPS aviation app.
I fly at that school, and knew the instructor and not the student. It was a night training so its guessed that it was disorentation or a faulty system led them to close to the mountains but nothing is confirmed. Such a sad thing, the instructor name was Rafael Ricote, an amazing pilot and even better human. Can’t speak for the student but I’m sure he was an amazing guy.
