Fair point. If you fly somewhere to collect somebody who needs to be back home next day certainly adds pressure, and if paid or otherwised incentvised for it even more so.
But on the other hand, the AAIB exists so we can learn from accidents to prevent reoccurrence, or rule out that such lessons can be learned.
This looks to me like there are no more lessons to be learned.
JasonC has a fair point regarding the “add pressure” from the commercial side of it, one will not be able to acheive 100% dispatch rate in GA without crashing one day, I bet that flight would have departed in conditions than are wose than those in the report?
However, I still think that accident could have happened in that AOC aircraft + CPL pilot, the “commercial legality” seems less relevant to me appart from the usual safety lines that you would get within an operator structure…
It will be interesting to know how many SEIR pilots still fly marginal VFR by night over water? Or by day just over terrain?
Like Jason, I think that the biggest lesson might be to do with risk ownership, pressure and “command gradient”.
“You have to get me there, no matter what” must be the most dangerous thing to say in aviation. It is the probable cause of so many crashes and deaths, the most obvious being the Polish Cabinet.
I used to fly a lot of cabinet ministers (including a prime one) and they could apply a lot of pressure. It was possibly the most difficult aspect of command to resist that pressure. On one occasion I had to take a hugely difficult decision and, although it turned out ok, I am still plagued by thinking I took the wrong decision under great pressure.
But my point is that that pressure doesn’t have to be financial. Actually, I think it usually isn’t. My one pressure accident, in the Scilly Isles, was out of sympathy for a family’s plight. Money was never part of the situation or mentioned.
I think that if Sala said to Henderson and Henderson said to Ibbotson that he had to get back from Nantes that evening, the decisions that Ibbotson took may have had no relationship with money at all. But had there been an AOC in place, it would have been much easier to point at s rule book and say no.
JasonC wrote:
I think a private pilot being subject to commercial pressures to complete a low altitude, VFR flight, in winter, at night, over the Channel, outside of any sort of regulated structure could well be relevant to the accident.
I agree. From what I can tell, any CPL/IR would not have flown this mission night VFR scud running / wave surfing across the Channel. While the license / certificate in itself may be irrelevant, the training that goes with it certainly isn’t.
Reading between the lines of the AAIB report one can also infer that Mr. Ibbotson was no stranger to this kind of operation. They don’t normally dwell as much on the various rules and regs surrounding the legality of the flight.
In my experience, people who engage as passengers in small GA planes are usually either interested in aviation or have a relation with the pilot directly or through friends and relatives.… For passengers who has enough cash, want to go private and see aviation as transport form a bizjet would be the natural choice not a SEP. As great as the PA46 might be it’s primarily an owner flown aircraft and to use it for any consistent transportation, it needs to be operated IFR. All of this speaks against an “unauthorized commercial style” business operation because one would not have any happy customers if VFR only. Dispatch rate would be terrible. IMHO a much more likely scenario is that this pilot was just offered a fun mission and a good reason to go flying. Then maybe pressured to fly under poor conditions.
The actual flight looks like an unfortunate case of loss of control in IMC conditions at night. I doubt icing was a major part. It does look like the flight was on autopilot initially and that it went straight into the cell from radar image after passing Guernsey. This being an 80s high performance single it was most likely fitted with a KFC 150 autopilot. It will disconnect in any light to moderate turbulence exceeding the threshold of Gs or rollrate limitations. Handflying in that scenario would indeed be very difficult. What matters in that scenario is experience and currency in IMC.
A well written preliminarily report. Flying low to remain ocas, at night, through some weather the margins are tight. I’m sure the pilot was under pressure due to the vip passenger. Get-there-itis.
The TV news, yesterday, showed a printout of a flight plan which they got from the French ATC 
I should have got a photo of the TV. It showed a VFR flight plan for 5500 or 6000ft (IIRC) and was filed with Skydemon.
The pilot licensing situation was highly relevant to the accident, because being a PPL with no IR meant he was limited to a low level flight.
Reading between the lines of the AAIB report one can also infer that Mr. Ibbotson was no stranger to this kind of operation
I am sure that is correct. I bet you that plane was quite busy…
It will be interesting to know how many SEIR pilots still fly marginal VFR by night over water? Or by day just over terrain?
In Europe, as a % of total, light GA traffic during a proper night is extremely low, simply because nearly all affordable airports are shut. Most night time is logged starting at official sunset plus 30 mins, when there is still a lot of light about. However for convenience reasons most people fly in the day anyway, because you then have better wx (starting in the early morning, usually) and you land with plenty of time to sort out fuel and the hotel. Arriving in Cardiff late would be a daft exercise unless somebody was organising everything for you (which in this case they probably were).
Peter wrote:
Most night time is logged starting at official sunset plus 30 mins, when there is still a lot of light about.
If you follow the EASA rules, you start logging night time at the end of civil twilight and at that time there is certainly not a lot of light around. Is SS+30 a FAA rule?
Airborne_Again wrote:
If you follow the EASA rules, you start logging night time at the end of civil twilight
Before SERA came into force, many countries at lower latitudes than Sweden operated a “SS+30 is a valid approximation of civil twilight” rule. You still see it in the opening hours of aerodromes…
There are two victims here, a young footballer who simply did not know what he was getting into and a pilot who was put under pressure to perform a flight that he should have been unhappy to do.
To me the people who decided to cheapskate on the travel arangments are guilty of not exercising a duty of care to the footballer ( the pilot was a victim of not saying NO !). It is clear that someone did not want to part with the money for a suitable aircraft with a professional crew and went for an option he was more favourable to the bank account. The fact that this breached the FAA cost sharing laws so comprehensively being ignored. ( FAA regulations are the only ones that can be applied)
The decision to use an unsuitable aircraft with a private pilot who clearly was under qualified for night operations with a very high chance of IMC flight is one that is going to be examined in great detail over the next few months simply because of the huge amounts of money involved.
