wrote:
The other ones that puzzle me are
pilots who get into minor emergencies (is that an oxymoron? g) and
then do nothing, either freeze up or decide their time has come and
just sit and watch.

More of those around than you think - they don't all wind up in the
database.

I know a local pilot/owner of a C-150 (not an Aerobat) who was out
teaching himself to do aerobatics. He got the plane rolled over and
got stuck. Of course we know that had he simply pulled back on the
yoke a bit, put in full aileron and maybe a bit of rudder, he would
have rolled right side up again - not pretty, but it would work.
Instead, he decide (his own words here) to "trust God and the Cessna
engineers" and let go of the controls. The plane eventually righted
itself.

I don't know how many accidents of twin engine
airplanes I've looked at where the pilot lost one engine but did
absolutely nothing about securing and feathering the dead engine (or
sometimes even retracting the gear). The prop control was found in
the
cruise or max high rpm setting after the crash, rather than having
been
pulled into the feather position.

I do a fair amount of twin engine recurrent training. Sometimes I fly
with people who haven't had any twin engine recurrent training in a
long time. All I can tell you is that I'm not surprised.

Privately owned twins are something of a special case. Based on my
experience I don't believe there is any such thing as an average piston
twin owner. There are those who are well trained - half the time these
are either airline pilots or trained by them - who have the twins
because they perceive themselves to be at increased risk of
engine/system failure because of the type of flying they do
(night/IFR/overwater/unfriendly terrain). These people maintain
carefully and train carefully. Then there are the ones who see a twin
as a cheap way to buy a fast airplane with a big cabin. I've really
seen nothing in the middle. Every private owner of a twin I've flown
with either handled engine cuts just fine or extremely poorly, with no
middle ground.

When a guy owns a quarter-mil+ pressurized turbocharged airplane he
really can't train in (engine cuts will destroy that kind of engine)
and decides that going to FlightSafety is a waste because the insurance
discount won't cover his costs of attenting, well, exactly what do you
expect?

In other words - I don't think the accidents you looked at were either
suicide or resignation - I think they were gross incompetence. The guy
literally forgot what he was supposed to be doing in the heat of the
emergency, because he had not drilled the procedures. You won't
believe that until you see a guy absolutely refuse to fly slower than
15 kts over blue line, even when he clearly can't hold altitude. I
know I didn't.

Michael