"Icebound" wrote
We have a pilot with 110 successfully Atlantic crossings and 5000 hours,
taking a plane...IFR... 2000 miles across the North Atlantic into the
Canadian sub-Arctic in the dead of winter...

If you make your living ferrying aircraft internationally (not make
the odd flight, but make your living that way - there is a huge
difference) then you can't really afford to turn down a plane just
because it's not really airworthy for IFR flight (most of them are
not) and you can't afford to scrub the flight just because you can't
legally make it. It's a dangerous way to make a living. So is flying
airshow aerobatics, cropdusting, fire bombing...

The only real question in my mind is why she brought her daughter
along.

Which brings up the question.... is this kind of decision-making truly an
anomaly.... or is it the norm more often than we would like to think?

I've known some people who routinely made ferry flights. Some of the
stories they told make me believe this isn't so far out.

You see, when a plane is in good shape and the ferry flight is
reasonably within the airplane's capability, you don't hire a pro.
They're expensive. You get an experienced local pilot to do it. It's
way cheaper, because they'll do it for expenses and pocket change.
It's when the experienced local pilots won't touch it, and the only
volunteers are kids with hours in three digits, that you hire the pro
- usually because the insurance company demands it or you don't trust
the kid with an uninsured airplane.

Do a whole ton of flights stay out of the Safety Board's reports more by
good luck than good management?

Yes, of course. Today's aircraft are pretty reliable. In 1900+
hours, I've seen an AI failure twice. That's not a lot. When you're
looking at only spending a few hours in IMC for the whole trip, there
is the tendency to ask "Well, what are the odds?" And they're not
high. But if you keep doing it time after time after time, the odds
catch up with you. That's all that happened here - the odds finally
caught up with a pilot after 5000 hours.

But what 5000 hours they must have been. Could any number of hours
getting hundred dollar hamburgers, going around the pattern, or
reading the newspaper while the autopilot flies the plane and the
stews serve drinks ever compare?

To quote Lindbergh (whose transatlantic crossing was made with far
more preparation, but whose equipment was less capable, more finicky,
and less redundant than what this pilot had):

"If I could fly for 10 years before being killed in a crash, that
would be a good trade for an ordinary lifetime."

Of course Lindbergh only did it once.

Michael