Pilot and passenger lost in English Channel

Flying a Malibu at night over the channel in forecasted snow and possible icing was not the best idea. Survival time in the water this time of year is measured in minutes. They were at 5,000' and descending to 2,300' when radar contact was lost.

The passenger was a footballer who had just signed a $15 million contract with Cardiff. The club had volunteered to fly him commercial, but he chose the Malibu.

It was owned by the father of his agent, and the pilot was a mid-time occasional flyer and apparently not instrument rated.
 
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There are some really interesting statements in an article from The Guardian. Is this a real news outlet or similar to The Onion?

Ibbotson is understood to have been using a loophole that allowed him to fly passengers between airports as long as he did not profit from any journey. He could claim “reasonable expenses” for fuel and other outgoings.
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Many pilots opt to obtain a licence from the FAA in the US as the process is said to be less stringent than that in the UK.

“You can get the licence that Dave had by just flying 10 hours. Obviously he was a lot more experienced than that and had flown for hundreds of hours, but it is fairly easy to get up in a plane,” Marshall said.
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Other articles criticize the pilot for having two jobs to fund flying and that he has debt (£18,000 to be exact), seemingly using that as evidence that he was not to be trusted behind the controls of an airplane. I have no idea what kind of pilot the guy was but that is absurd.
 
DogoPilot said:
...Other articles criticize the pilot for having two jobs to fund flying and that he has debt (£18,000 to be exact), seemingly using that as evidence that he was not to be trusted behind the controls of an airplane. I have no idea what kind of pilot the guy was but that is absurd.
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£18,000=$23,000. Is there a pilot (with a Malibu) in the USA with less debt?
 
I read a story that the flight plan was VFR. Is that even possible when flying international?
 
The Guardian is a kind of nutjob rag, the left wing equivalent of something like the Daily Mail.
 
maj75 said:
I read a story that the flight plan was VFR. Is that even possible when flying international?
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Yes. When you fly at 1000ft over Calais (France, closest to UK) on a good day, you clearly see the coast of the UK. It looked amazingly close when I flew there this summer.
 
maj75 said:
I read a story that the flight plan was VFR. Is that even possible when flying international?
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Tons of pilots, including me, have been flying back and forth between the USA and Canada on VFR flight plans for decades. Why would you think it should be otherwise?

The distances many of us fly in a single leg within the USA are often enough to cross four or five different countries in Europe.
 
I believe it was in my pilot training material.
 
maj75 said:
I read a story that the flight plan was VFR. Is that even possible when flying international?
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I got to fly left seat VFR between the UK and France. Plane belonged to a club my colleague in London was a member of. He flew in the right seat and had the clubs okay. Great expirence.
 
At first, I thought it was about Maj Glen Miller.

Cheers
 
maj75 said:
I read a story that the flight plan was VFR. Is that even possible when flying international?
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The pilot used a flight planning and navigation software application installed on his portable tablet computer to create a route between Nantes and Cardiff and file the VFR flight plan. This information had been uploaded to the pilot’s cloud account.
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From: AAIB Report, which contains other interesting information.
 
Do we know if the plane was FIKI?
3393RP said:
forecasted snow and possible icing
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...so this should be only flown by a competent and proficient plane, IFR, in a plane that is capable of it.. since this is overwater out of glide range, a life raft would be an essential item in my opinion

3393RP said:
occasional flyer and apparently not instrument rated
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WHY?!??! do people do this crap?!?!?
 
Non commercial and non instrument rated private pilot. Sad... its big in the news at the moment here.
 
dennisc172 said:
Sad
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Is putting it lightly. Enfuriating is more like it. Stupid pilot tricks lead to A) death in the short run B) higher costs, more regulations, decreased freedom in the long run

Also a good case study of when not wanting to let someone down ($15M footballer) leads to bad decisions

Objectively speaking I'll be curious what actually brought the plane down. Disorientation, inadvertent IMC, ice? If they were descending it seems maybe they were trying to get under some stuff (ice?) or look for warmer air.. ice can be insidious
 
maj75 said:
I read a story that the flight plan was VFR. Is that even possible when flying international?
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Yes. That would be normal.

Controlled airspace in Europe often starts at 5000 ft and many flights in that airspace have to be done as 'controlled VFR'.
 
Being a non IFR pilot, maybe he was trying to get under some weather???
 
So some immediate things come to mind:
A.) would operating lean of peak mitigate this risk?
B.) I've never been in a plane that didn't have some form of CO alerting.. whether that was part of the avionics, or that little cardboard thing you see taped to planes

Getting into theoreticals here... let's say you were in the pilots shoe's and you KNEW you were having a CO issue.. what would you do out over the english channel? I am not aware of the Malibu having any meaningful windows that can be opened to ventilate... so you just put the air on full cold and hope for the best?
 
Tantalum said:
let's say you were in the pilots shoe's and you KNEW you were having a CO issue
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goodbye, nearest side window! (assuming other, non-destructive methods would not work)
(However I think most of these, the victims are unaware)
 
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