This is digressing now but I am told a PPL can do a ferry flight if he contributes to the cost – even £1, under current rules, is ok. He cannot make money out of it. So the school using a PPL to do maintenance positioning, with a discount on the rental, is legit.
Peter wrote:
So the school using a PPL to do maintenance positioning, with a discount on the rental, is legit.
For schools, the usual case were FIs who hold PPL (or used to have CPL but no class 1)
Peter wrote:
So how the hell did the pilot get out, because in a PA46 there is only one way out and that is past the passenger(s).
Since we are doing completely random tongue-in-cheek guesses now: could not get passenger (petrified by fear) out of his belt and seat? Didn’t care about passenger and just went off?
lionel wrote:
Since we are doing completely random tongue-in-cheek guesses now: could not get passenger (petrified by fear) out of his belt and seat? Didn’t care about passenger and just went off?
That would imply a soft(ish) ditching. Which in turn implies that the plane was under control till the end. If that’s the case, then why no ‘Mayday’ call ?
Nobody has seen any detailed footage of the plane so nobody knows how hard the impact was. The cell looks „ok“ but that doesn’t tell anything. Maybe it crashed in the sea, just barely stayed intact, both were dead immediately and one just drifted out….
Yes this is very strange, and I don’t think anybody can guess. The report should illuminate it to some extent, not least because they will have the radar tracks (with or without transponder altitude info…) and they will show if there was a loss of control situation. LOC always produces a spiral; you can’t really do it with wings level.
I am sure they released the photo of the back end and no others for a reason, and I don’t think it was the presence of a body in the front…
I am very far from a plane spotter but I get contacted almost daily from someone asking my opinion on whether some plane is a good buy, etc, so I am well used to having a quick “dig around”, and I do find it weird that this plane has almost no history on google/images and likewise on FR24. Especially in light of rumours going around concerning lots of similar flights.
You can get FR24 to suppress some listings, but the other tracking sites don’t play ball on that, and this site shows it at Sawtooth Airport, Arizona, on 26/12/2018. Not sure how credible this is.
This site might show something but I am not going to install the app just to find out 
For Europe, just pic(s) from Spain in 2010.
Is there a pic of the panel out there, which shows the model of transponder? The 2015 video (published on some newspaper website) shows a very old KT79 Mode A/C box
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47172509
Appeared today on the BBC Wales section. SAC getting a mention plus, A SOURCE noting that the FAA regime perceived as less stringent than in Europe. (Oh Dear that old chessnut). I would like a chat with the source…..
Article quotes..‘The trust serves as an ’’administrative screen’, obscuring the true identity of the owners. The FAA database appears to have removed the owner detail…..
‘’Atlantic ferry flights of small planes is ’’perilous but lucrative activity of transporting small planes across continents to their new owners." It goes on and on, but utter drivel such as this bollox is not good. The perception is that the N community are all in some way dodgy. I thought we had dispelled that.
If only they knew the truth 
BBC Wales contacted me yesterday – they found this. I spoke to them for over an hour. The person I spoke to appeared to be doing a diligent bit of research.
It was obvious that the (numerous) people they contacted before me had told them the N-reg scene is full of shysters, dodgy maintenance, illegal charters, all the usual stuff. Well, this is to be expected; large chunks of the “industry” hate N-reg, for all the well worn reasons to do with revenue reduction and axe grinding (FTOs being at the top of the list). So a phone call to a randomly chosen organisation will yield that sort of “opinion”.
I explained to them in detail the principal reasons for N-reg in light GA (the more accessible IR, a more pragmatic maintenance regime, access to FAA STCs, not, in light GA, the confidentiality of the trustee system which is not the case anyway for around 10 years since the FAA requires the identity of the beneficial owner to be exposed to them) and I made the point to them that N-reg is irrelevant to this incident. IF this was a charter flight, it would need an AOC, a pilot with a CPL, and – with some inapplicable exceptions – two engines. It appears clear that none of these three applied. And an N-reg could go on a UK AOC, subject to a raft of conditions.
Historically the USA enjoys a better safety record than Europe, not strictly relevant to this incident as it seems probable FAA regs were not being observed in any case.
One thing worth noticing is that in the submerged photo the tail section looks clearly crumpled into the main hull. This looks like an impact with water at some speed, not a controlled ditching. It could be an impact going forward (and the tail’s inertia causes this) or it could be a tail strike into water as the initial contact.
