Pig wrote:
In my usually harsh way, yes, ATC were poor, but I regret to say this is pilot error. Tragic as it is. Personal responsibility and accountability is constantly being eroded in the new age of always someone else to blame. ATC may well have been useless, but, as is very clear here, the buck always rests with the individual.
This was a system failure more than anything else. We know that people will make mistakes. “Pilot error” is inevitable, so we set up the system to try to alleviate that. One of the ways this is done is support from ATC in emergencies. That didn’t work in this case.
Peter wrote:
It is Tuesday
Maybe a bit of notice so that people can join and think about it beforehand?
If we do it this evening, maybe word hasn’t gotten out that we are doing it this week?
Either way I’d be interesting in taking part, but we should decide quickly if it’s to be this Tuesday or next Tuesday?
Is there an interest in discussing it in a Zoom lounge call?
I will be away next Tuesday… but you don’t need me 
Pig wrote:
but I regret to say this is pilot error
Well yes and no. The pilot did a lot wrong. He put himself in distress. Without ATC he would have died most probably all the same, because the only thing he could have done would have been to decide for one direction and fly as far as fuel allows.
So yes until the very moment he called ATC, all to blame is the pilot. He could have known better. But then ATC is installed and paid and maintained to be there to be relied upon (me thinks). This is one particular example of where ATC could have safed the lives on board. But they failed on judging the pilot right.
It’s a very figurative example of the swiss cheese model.
This shows that, despite much of GA flying with satnav and smartphones, there are still pilots who have little idea of what is where and how to get there. This is UK VFR and basically anywhere below 3000ft or so you can get 4G, so you can get wx for various airports. This is not FL100 where only an ADL150 or similar will work.
One could say – and I am not labelling this pilot at all – the D&D system is today operated for total complete muppets. Well, it was set up for the old-style RAF which worked on the basis that Stalin/Kruschev/Brezhnev/etc will not invade in sub-CAVOK conditions 
It was only about 15 years ago that the RAF put out a jubilant press release that some elite squadron had purchased ~100 Skymap 2 boxes, and they were really proud of it (my first GPS, 2001)
And when I was at an FTO in Bournemouth in 2011, one of the lecturers proudly described, as a pinnacle of his RAF career, the design of a chart printing machine which could print off a chart from the UK to Australia, fanfolded on one piece of paper!
So this is the “elite” D&D on 121.50, sitting there in their uniforms
Nobody, absolutely nobody, is going to stand back and look at the awful state of the PPL training, the totally inadequate 2-yearly PPL revalidation, and this WW2 system which must cost millions a year, and AFAICT exists only because some % of pilots can’t get wx while flying. The accident aircraft was pretty unstable, fair enough, but there were two pilots, no?
ATC or D&D should have told this poor guy that airfield xxxx is CAVOK and he can get there by flying a heading of yyy. Or even send him to France, heading zzz.
I’m sure to be in for a good kicking on this, so knock yourselves out, but..
If you are up there and in trouble and you cannot, cannot under any circumstances, just abrogate responsibility and have no plan. Expecting others to come up with a plan is not a strategy under any circumstances in the game we play. I’m sorry, and I don’t mean to be rude. Yes, ATC were woefully incompetent, and I’d like to wager that if any of us were in their (ATC) place we would have a figured a solution – it wasn’t rocket science to try and find a hole within 90 minutes – but taking personal responsibility is the very essence of being a pilot. Surely.
And yes, I’ve made plenty of mistakes, and actually been more than lucky to walk away, but above all it it’s always been my cock up to own.
Just my two cents.
ATC or D&D should have told this poor guy that airfield xxxx is CAVOK and he can get there by flying a heading of yyy. Or even send him to France, heading zzz.
You know that does not work that way
The typical ATC won’t pull any weather report for you, they ask you to free-call London Info for that, who take ages to get that, they have to call each unit: there is no centralised ATIS/STAP and no landline phone ATIS (London Center only have weather for military airfields that are feeding D&D)
Getting approach ATC or enroute ATC to give weather in UK is like pulling teeth, you have to fly there and get it yourself…
The typical ATC won’t pull any weather report for you…
Maybe it’s UK stuff…
You know that does not work that way
I do not.
The typical ATC won’t pull any weather report for you, they ask you to free-call London Info for that,
True for London Control
who take ages to get that, they have to call each unit: there is no centralised ATIS/STAP
They get it off the internet
and no landline phone ATIS (London Center only have weather for military airfields that are feeding D&D)
Never heard of that
Getting approach ATC or enroute ATC to give weather in UK is like pulling teeth, you have to fly there and get it yourself…
True but these guys were VFR, so this is N/A
Ibra wrote:
Getting approach ATC or enroute ATC to give weather in UK is like pulling teeth, you have to fly there and get it yourself…
Sure, for approach or enroute ATC, and for a normal flight. But this wasn’t approach or enroute ATC, nor a normal flight.
This was an emergency, declared as such, making contact with a unit specifically designed to provide a service to emergency flights. I would expect them to (and expect they normally do) move mountains to get whatever info is needed.
I don’t think what happened on this occasion is normal for them, but rather a case of a few things coming together which left people falling into assumptions that were incorrect.
And even aside from D&D, other units will get you weather in an emergency.
A few years ago, I was right seat in an aircraft returning to Ireland from the UK. Across the Irish sea we got the “goldfish bowl” effect where every thing was the same shade of gray in 360 degrees. IMC. So we decided to divert to EGCK. We were talking to London Info at the time and told them what we were doing and why. We didn’t declare an emergency as we weren’t in any great difficulty, just being safe. A couple of minute later London Info came back to us (without any request from us) with the latest weather for EGCK (they had called EGCK to get the latest weather), the runway in use. advised that EGCK were excepting us and that they had no traffic in the vicinity of the airfield and that EGCK aware of our reason for diverting and also offered a couple of other airports in the area which had good weather. All without any request from us.
So I think it’s unfair to brush them with that comment. It might have some ring of truth for normal operations, but when it becomes an emergency, they will (normally) move mountains, and even if they sense you are in difficulty but you don’t declare an emergency, they will do what they can to help.
