… which is entirely pointless other than for the insurance to find an excuse not to pay.
Accidents do not occur because of lack of paper or licences, but lack of pilot capability or defects. There is no reason to believe that the pilot’s proficiency on type in general or with the aircraft power, gear, or VP prop had anything to do with this accident.
The only thong that appears relevan is if he was capable of flying in IMC, legally or not.
I dont think I agree.
I have almost always found the various renewals, and paper gaining excercises, very useful. I think that on the whole any regulated enviroment, or enviroment generally in which professionals work together is beneficial. Of course there are inevitably occasions when they arent productive for various reasons. I think on occasions they can also make it very apparent that you believe your skilll set to be better than it actually is, and that, in itself may stop a pilot taking on a particular mission. In accident investigations often the last flights with another pilot or instructor can be very insightful.
Cobalt wrote:
Accidents do not occur because of lack of paper or licences, but lack of pilot capability or defects. There is no reason to believe that the pilot’s proficiency on type in general or with the aircraft power, gear, or VP prop had anything to do with this accident.The only thing that appears relevan is if he was capable of flying in IMC, legally or not.
But the two are not independent. A lack of appropriate licencing has been clealry shown to be linked to an attitude towards flying. And I think it is clear that there are reasonable grounds for questioning proficiency on type. The aircraft was flying a profile which is entirely inconsistent with its capabilities. That indicates that either the pilot didnt know its capabilities and so flew it like a PA28, or or there was some other capability tike an IR that was missing and he was trying to compensate.
I agree there is a connection (via human psychology; people careless in one area tend to be so in others) except that
The aircraft was flying a profile which is entirely inconsistent with its capabilities
is not wholly the case, since plenty of PA46 (piston) activity is done at low levels. It was a recognition of this usage which caused Piper to bring out the Matrix. Which, ahem, has been a market failure… but IMHO because even though a % of PA46 owners fly them low, they still “would like” the capability to go high. This is a common failure in market research. What people actually use, even 100% of the time, is not what they desire.
One thread relevant to the licensing issues is here.
Peter wrote:
is not wholly the case, since plenty of PA46 (piston) activity is done at low levels. It was a recognition of this usage which caused Piper to bring out the Matrix. Which, ahem, has been a market failure… but IMHO because even though a % of PA46 owners fly them low, they still “would like” the capability to go high.
That really isn’t my experience of the type or owners – it is a very inefficient and expensive type for that sort of flying with poor visibility. The Matrix I have never understood.
In any event given the conditions, a type trained pilot would have flown higher. The profile still makes no sense to me.
I think that on the whole any regulated enviroment, or enviroment generally in which professionals work together is beneficial.
THREAD DRIFT ALERT
As always with generalizations, there are shades of grey, and optimum ones at that…too much or too little can be detrimental.
The epitomic example is the negative effect on GA [safety *] of the over-regulation brought about by EASA since 2003, and whose trend has recently been reversed…not before a whole GA generation has been lost.
[*] Negative effect on GA in general could be bad, but the observed effect on safety is simply unacceptable for a regulation whose stated intent is the improvement of safety.
Coming back to topic:
A lack of appropriate licencing has been clealry shown to be linked to an attitude towards flying
I believe that is the relevant link.
The profile still makes no sense to me.
As discussed: it only makes sense in the light of a deliberate avoidance of IFR for one of the multiple reasons previously stated. I cannot think of an aircraft technical condition that would limit the flight profile to such low altitude (vs FL130) which would not have precluded the intended low-altitude night-VFR flight too, even in a ‘non-regulatory-compliant’ attitude.
I don’t know if by
I believe that is the relevant link.
But his
deliberate avoidance of IFR
About everything else (if he had the FAA endorsements for complex and high performance, or a BFR, or whatever else was required) we have no information whatsoever.
If he had an EASA IR, then one could even argue that regulations prevented him from flying IFR outside UK airspace and hence were a contributing factor. But again, we don’t know that.
Cobalt wrote:
If he had an EASA IR, then one could even argue that regulations prevented him from flying IFR outside UK airspace and hence were a contributing factor. But again, we don’t know that.
Another interesting statistic of VFR-into-IMC accidents is that about 30% of them happen to pilots who actually do have an IR. (Source:
It’s more about the “mindset” and the pilot competence than the ratings in my opinion.
It seems to me it is the lack of an AOC+CPL that prevent the use of “IR flying skills” in that flight, I doubt anyone with “any IR skills” flying an N-reg outside G-airspace will have issues climbing high in PA46 or diverting if getting caught by weather, this can be done “perfectly legal” using even a PPL (I don’t think you need an FAA IR for an emergency VFR/IFR climb on a PPL, tough having a current form of IR is a plus), otherwise can someone tell me how all those 61.75 PPL are flying in the UK with all the iffy weather around?
My point even a fresh PPL only would have flown it safe and legal if he was not in that “grey AOC ops”…
Another interesting statistic of VFR-into-IMC accidents is that about 30% of them happen to pilots who actually do have an IR
Sure, although – at least looking at the ones I know about – these tend to involve somewhat bizzare circumstances, not the usual “PPL flying into cloud and losing control” scenario. The way IR holders kill themselves is usually stuff like
Around Europe, lots of “instrument capable” PPL holders fly routinely in IMC without an IFR flight plan – partly because the Eurocontrol system has made life so complicated, and only in recent years has become easier due to the software tools. You just have to do it right 
