Emir wrote:
I believe you’re wrong. Go to www.evolutionjet.aero or www.aviation-broker.com and you’ll get the quote.
Agree you can get a quote but will still require complicated logisticsto get a real transaction, tjey are just brokers they dont have jets: it does not mean you can fly tomorrow on a short notice, unless you know someone who knows someone it is not just click and buy…I don’t think the football team move their guys from Nantes to Cardiff that often
Emir wrote:
I believe you’re wrong. Go to www.evolutionjet.aero or www.aviation-broker.com and you’ll get the quote.
I believe you are wrong: THAT is NOT a booking – just an “estimate” – absolutely nothing stated or guaranteed
Other than the lack of an IR forcing him to be at VFR altitudes
Do we know that? From what I’ve read, all we know is that the pilot flew unusually low, and appears to have had a PPL.
But the facebook posting indicates that he flew an ILS at Nantes. So it’s entirely possible that he did have an IR.
The rusty comment on Facebook might be pilot joking, or might mean that he didn’t use the IR all that much recently.
But others have suggested, and it’s still a reasonable possibility I think, that the pilot could have flown IFR, but choose not to for some reason. Eg. they couldn’t get a plan into the EuroControl system without undue delay (Maybe that’s why the passenger had time to make a call on the ground?), or the routing was too indirect, and they choose to fly VFR instead.
I’ve not read anything so far that says the pilot didn’t have an IR.
I’ve never been in a Malibu. Do they have any form of electronic recording that might give a clue to what happened, if the aircraft is ever recovered?
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Am I in isolation in saying having looked at the TAFs 999 out of 1,000 or whatever the flight should have been fine. In that aircraft with everything working and given the TAFs and METARs I have seen, and ability to climb on top (which I accept the pilot may not have had), the conditions were not that bad. Personally at night over the sea in the winter I wouldnt do the trip in a single, but then I am risk adverse to flying a single in certain circumstances that many would. The sea part would also be relatively short. I am not making comment about any of the legality considerations, simply commenting on a pilot with suitable experience and the type of aircraft involved, with all vital equipment fully serviceable and proven.
Should have been being the operative word.
Going VFR, he really had three choices:
1. Scud run, staying under the weather. Probably going to be 2,000ft at the highest, which isn’t a great idea over the channel is it?
2. Go as high as possible under the Class A airspace. This doesn’t guarantee you’ll be VMC on top the whole way, or even at all.
3. Pick an altitude and stick at it, whatever weather appears in front. Again does not guarantee VMC.
It looks like he adopted a flexible approach, starting with 3 and changing to 1.
We know he was at 5,000ft and requested a descent before disappearing at 2,300ft. Why would you descend from 5,000ft to 2,300ft over the sea other than weather?
I agree the TAFs and METARS were not that bad in the grand scheme of things, but ice and turbulence were certainly both forecast and (objectively) reasonably likely if you entered IMC.
The problem with TAFs and METARs is that information on the cloud base is useful, but for any flight where I might not be able to remain beneath cloud the information I really want is where the tops are. The base I can see before I launch!
Also I will not underestimate an electrical failure at night over water (even twin jets have circled in around Halifax in North atlantic with 10h fuel endurance and crashed) but this hard to believe given everybody would have a tablet/phone backup these days and seems unrelated to 2000ft decent which highly suggestive of tactical weather avoidance?
IBRA.
Tactical weather avoidance or an aircraft so badly iced that it was unable to maintain altitude ? I guess we will never know one way or the other.
A_and_C wrote:
or an aircraft so badly iced that it was unable to maintain altitude ? I guess we will never know one way or the other.
You would hope, hope, that a pilot descending because his aircraft couldn’t maintain altitude would say a little more to ATC than just ‘request descent’ in the way one might for tactical weather avoidance.
I did a small frequency analysis of the Whatsapp audio published on various websites.
Based on my findings, I believe the aircraft was taxiing on the ground when the audio was recorded.
To find the RPM I used the audio of another Malibu Continental TSIO-520 revving at 2500 RPM as a reference. I found it from a video on YouTube (5NT_njzWCk0)
PS: Don’t quote me on this, there is a lot of room for error in such analysis.
dublinpilot wrote:
I’ve not read anything so far that says the pilot didn’t have an IR.
It was stated early in this thread that a research in the FAA’s airman database showed the pilot had an FAA-validated EASA license without an IR.
This FAA license was required for an international flight on an N-reg. This is not to say the pilot did not have the knowledge to fly IFR, although he himself admitted in the ref’d facebook entry that he was not current. It has not been posted whether he did have an EASA IR or a UK IMC
