Quote:
Originally Posted by jaxmagicman
He should have gone vertical. But he was limited to at or below 2500 because of the traffic. So for him to go vertical, he would have admitted he couldn't see, then caused a delay as the scramble the airport traffic out of his way and then he has to answer a lot of questions. It's his hubris that caused this.
I know I'm blaming the pilot and it could have been a malfunction, but by the witness accounts, air traffic radio and the fact he flew 180 MPH into the side of a hill, if it isn't the pilot's fault, I'd be surprised.
This witness in particular. |
I don't drive my car at 80 mph in a dense fog..that's suicidal.
Here's a quick story. I was the Commander of a base weather station in England. We had the A-10's, in fact we were the first base outside of the US to house them. They were daytime VFR, and field minimums for the highest rated pilots were 700 foot ceilings and visibility 1 mile or greater.
So...I see a fog bank coming in from the east, where the North Sea was just a few miles away. I notify the control tower that visibility will rapidly decrease. There were 30 planes on the way home from the gunnery range up in the Norwich area..about an hours' flight time.
As the trainee pilots landed, I dropped the official weather observation down to the next category...from 3 miles, then to 2 miles. The next set of pilots landed, rated to land at 2 miles or greater. Did I have 2 miles visibility at the time? Ummm...no. I couldn't see the tree line, 1.7 miles away. We used fixed points around the base, at a known distance, to help us determine prevailing visibility.
To end a long story, it was flat out foggy when the last pilot landed, the Wing Commander. He stopped by the weather station a little while later, and asked if I was the one doing the weather observations. I said I was..and he said thanks, and then told me "don't ever do this again."