"VOR-DME" wrote

Besides that, just as a matter of intellectual honesty, we should give the
crew enough benefit of the doubt not to fall to the "it wouldn't have
happened to me. . ." fallacy - at least until all of the ifactual
information is in?

I fly IFR by hand in IMC for practice and recurrent training, but would not
subject trusting passengers to this risk. Instead I use the autopilot,
whose judicious use I consider to be one of the most important safety
devices in the airplane. To say the autopilot should not be used under
certain circumstances is one thing, but here we are coming close to the
Fox
News ideal of posthumously condemning the pilot to 50 counts of first
degree for having used the autopilot.

While I agree with your basic premise, (of not blaming the pilot before the
report is out) it is fact that they were still on auto, they knew there was
ice, it was against company policy to do so in ice, and it is a generally
accepted "fact" that flying on auto in ice can be very risky, indeed.

It seems only truthful to say that the pilots did something that was wrong,
and in this case, they bought the farm because of it.
--
Jim in NC