I’ve not seen any accurate words on the pilots qualifications – does anyone know for sure ?
The words on another avation forum is the pilot held an FAA PPL with a no night flying restriction .
Sala died of head and body injuries. I guess that puts an end to the fairy tale of ‘ditching’ and at the same time puts spatial disorientation of the (vfr) pilot back into focus.
the pilot held an FAA PPL with a no night flying restriction .
Yes; this was established early on in this (very long) thread, from the pilot’s faa.gov record. An FAA PPL always includes night privileges (unless done in Alaska or some such, where special concessions exist like e.g. you are exempted from the cross country in Hawaii 
).
Sala died of head and body injuries
This is in the news, from the inquest. I am informed by an experienced diver that the “sea life” would have had a lot of him anyway, so the need for forensics to identify him.
at the same time puts spatial disorientation of the (vfr) pilot back into focus.
Yes; I don’t honestly think he had any IR, though – like “half the UK” – he may have held, either current or at some past point, the IMCR. The latter possibility might explain why he headed out of French airspace ASAP, which would be a dumb piece of risk management in an SEP at night, knowing perfectly well (assuming he could read tafs and metars) the flight will head straight into IMC.
Peter wrote:
Yes; I don’t honestly think he had any IR, though – like “half the UK” – he may have held, either current or at some past point, the IMCR. The latter possibility might explain why he headed out of French airspace ASAP, which would be a dumb piece of risk management in an SEP at night, knowing perfectly well (assuming he could read tafs and metars) the flight will head straight into IMC.
A definite possibility.
However, equally possible was for the reasons I said earlier. It is the shortest route, and from Guernsey to Salcombe Point hardly any difference from the Cap to St Catherines. The pilot was probably in VMC unitl the French coast. In any event if he was that anxious to avoid French airspace running down the west of the peninsula not many miles of the French coast would have kept him in CI CAS and so outside French airspace, then routing between ORTAC and the Cap to St CP.
“you are exempted from the cross country in Hawaii”
I don’t think they do “cross channel checks” neither ;)
It will be good to know from the investigation if icing was an “aerdynamic factor” in what it appears from pictures like a total loss of control? or just loosing it by night & imc while they were changing altitude?
If he really had no instrument qualifications, to the extent that he was willing to bump around at 5,000, even 2,300’, why did he report on FB that he did a rusty ILS into Nantes?
Come on Timothy you’ve been kicking around pilot forums for even longer than I have. It is completely totally not unprecedented that somebody without an FAA IR gets himself photographed sitting in the LHS of a PA46 at FL250 over Germany 
Myself being a simple honest bloke, I naturally assumed there was an FAA CFII in the RHS Following the exposure, the said character then immediately went to the US and got himself a real FAA CPL/IR. Some pilots cannot stop themselves advertising their larger than life achievements. It works, until they beat up too many people all over the internet (in forums which go for max traffic for the advert feed, or which are unmoderated for “culture-specific” reasons, or the mod lets them beat up others to settle some imaginary scores, etc) and then somebody goes to faa.gov and…. whoops!
But, seriously, I wonder if you can get prosecuted over a posting on a forum. You could say you made it up. It has been done before, after all. AFAIK they would need corroborating evidence e.g. airport tower logs, tapes, etc, but how far back do you go? UK airports keep the radar tapes a few weeks and after that they get filed away, reportedly at a GCHQ warehouse at Menwith Hill
Well, sometimes the pilot leaves pretty good evidence
But if he was just bigging himself up, why would he say the ILS was ropy?
I mean, he either did it or he didn’t. If he didn’t, why say it was ropy? If he did, then he clearly has some IFR experience, probably even some IMC experience.
Ibra wrote:
“you are exempted from the cross country in Hawaii”
I don’t think they do “cross channel checks” neither ;)
