MattL wrote:Let’s not forget these were two members of our community who set out with friends and other flyers to have a great day out flying, after two years of limited flying due COVID. Several other aircraft made the same flight successfully, another didn’t and another also crashed. A whole bunch of Human Factors has brought a tragic outcome. Please don’t think ‘could never happen to me / how stupid were they’ - have a look at some of the photos in the report and honestly ask if you’ve not flown towards weather like that thinking there is gaps to go round / under it. It’s easy to be captain hindsight sat on your sofa reading an Internet forum.
I have on many occasions flown towards weather like that hoping there would be gaps or I’d be able to fly around.
When there wasn’t I came up with another plan, I didn’t fly into cumulous with water falling out of the bottom of it.
Only the other week I didn’t make it to Beccles, I decided on a different plan when I got to Rougham.
All we can do is learn from this.
The pilots were not stupid people, but that was a stupid thing to do.
It’s not about being captain hindsight, it’s about trying to see what went wrong.
What went wrong is quite obvious. I think the report is quite explicit in pointing out the weather conditions did not appear from nowhere and it was a conscious decision to fly into cloud, when others didn’t.
It even says that a former passenger said they were with the pilot on a flight to LeTouquet and they’d flown in cloud.