"Gezellig" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:54:44 GMT, Mike wrote:

"Gezellig" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:45:00 GMT, Mike wrote:

I've flown with plenty of 300 hour pilots who don't multitask well
and
some
of them had their instrument and commercial. I didn't multitask well
at
300
hours. That's something you pick up with experience.

I've flown with many that have picked up MT skills well under 300.
It's
not a black-white consideration.

Some do, but it's certainly not out of line that he didn't. As far as
his
decision making goes, the actual conditions turned out worse than
anyone
had
forecast. Flying at night can always turn into a hazardous situation,
but
Kennedy had flown a considerable amount of time with an instructor at
night,
and he was working on his instrument ticket. So he was genuinely
interested
in improving his flying skills and there's nothing to indicate he made
any
bad decisions.

If you mean before he spun, I would heavily disagree.

My guess is he probably attempted too steep of a turn and
had no idea he was in any danger of spacial disorientation because he
didn't
recognize that he was in instrument conditions. Unfortunately it's a
common
mistake for low time pilots and lots of them kill themselves that way.

This is your neck of the woods, if he had called you up, would you have
said "Go"?

I never tell anyone if they should go or not. That's their own decision
to
make.

20% of fatal GA accidents are at night even though night flights make up
only 5% of the GA traffic. Of those fatal accidents, the most common is
exactly the situation that Kennedy found himself. So it wasn't as if
Kennedy was in an easy situation and did something monumentally stupid.

The chain of mistakes he made was at least a small monument to
stupidity, imo.

No more so than the dozens of people who manage to kill themselves the same
way each year. To simply dismiss Kennedy as stupid and unskilled negates
any educational value which can be derived from the accident. Personally I
prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.