Originally Posted by
martymayes
David, I don't want to bore you but I had an experience eerily similar to this one.
When I was a young CFI, I taught an 'older' gentleman (upper 40's, lol) how to fly. He had been passed from CFI to CFI, all out just to empty his wallet. None of them had any intention of letting him progress to first solo, so at 40 hrs of dual one CFI decided he needed a dual X-C.
Then I started flying with him. We started at the beggining. To say he was a challenging student is an understatement. But I got him to solo. Then another. Then I soled him on the requisite x-c flights. Then I prepped him and got him passed his checkride. After that we sat down and had a long talk. I "advised" him to avoid marginal wx conditions. Same with night. Fly only on good VFR days. Then I told him to stay in simple airplanes, those with only two seats. This was all based on my experience flying with him. I knew his weaknesses.
About 6 months later, he purchased a Cessna 172L. He wanted me to check him out in it. So I did. Older but well cared for plane. We parted ways and I gave him the same advice, good VFR only, >5000/5, no night, don't fill up the seats with passengers.
Well, one fall Sat. in 1983, he loaded up his dad, adult son and daughter and flew from Louisiana to College Station, TX for an A & M football game. (What is it with planes and football games?) They came back home around 7pm, very dark night due to low ceilings (BKN 007), light rain, reduced visibility. He ended up about 50 miles N. of where he should have been, recognized he was lost, circled, called for help, received assistance in the form of radar vectors but became spatially disoriented and crashed in a steep nose down attitude. There were no survivors.
The IIC told me that while his poor choices got him into a bad situation, he was doing everything right to get out of it -apparently he had a good CFI (his words). Unfortunately, he couldn't control the plane by reference to instruments long enough to end the flight successfully. I knew that would happen if he ever inadvertenly entered IFR for more than a couple minutes. Maybe I'm not such a good CFI after all.
So I have spent a lot of time over the years thinking what could I have done differently. Any ideas? Could this have been prevented?