A google on Roland Prado is fun - as usual... but unproductive.
What is the aircraft reg?
What is the aircraft reg?
The paper doesn't say.
Ben said:
I have a friend that flies the Atlantic....he flew my cousin’s 172 via the Azores to Israel.
Could you, please, ask your friend how much Avgas was in his Cessna 172 on take-off from St John's?!
Has there been any news on this? It has gone totally quiet – as if it never happened.
That’s normal. The media lose interest after a few days.
And nowadays, the accident reports are very cautious and don’t say much that is of interest to pilots in terms of “learning a lesson”. I always love those reports ending with “probable cause: pilot’s failure to maintain control of the aircraft.” 
(Obviously, in this case, the finding will be different).
The only thing of interest would be if it was a mechanical failure or pilot’s failure. But empirical evidence suggests that it was maybe 90% pilot’s error.
Yes, even TB pilots do dumb things. 
The BEA accident report is here:
http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2013/i-eh130426/pdf/i-eh130426.pdf
What scares me:
Loss of contact: 15:27
Controller raises alarm: 15:31
Begin of search and rescue operations: 16:41
- or one hour and fifteen minutes after contact was lost and less than 30 miles from the departure airfield. There are countless low-level flights in this region all the time (an aproach to Nice almost every minute), why didn’t they vector another aircraft to that spot to have a look during that hour it took them to launch the lifeboats? It shows once more: If you have to ditch, you are very much on your own, even close to shore.
Controller raises alarm: 15:31
Begin of search and rescue operations: 16:41
If EASA had anything to do with safety, they would regularly ask pilots to fake an emergency like that (fly somewhere, lose radio contact, turn off transponder, dive down below radar altitude and disappear to some airfield) and benchmark its member states on how they react. I would not surprised if the outcome was less than optimal with certain member states not doing anything at all and others wasting time for no reason…
Compte tenu de la vitesse verticale et du rayon de virage, il est probable que la
trajectoire de descente était contrôlée.
So it was a controlled descent followed by death.
Lyon told Toulon air/sea rescue at 1600, they were at the accident site at 16.42. As it was probably a helicopter that was not bad considering the accident site is 60NM+ to the east of Toulon against probably a 25kt headwind.
So 29 minutes for the controller to write the message on paper, the messenger to saddle his donkey and deliver it to the rescue services? That should really be 1 minute, shouldn’t it?
