VTAILJEFF@aol.com wrote:

You are partly correct. Shannon's flight profile suggests someone who didn't have a clue about how to make an engine out landing.

Well, I guess we still have a minor disagreement.  To me the flight profile indicates a really really badly flown engine-out approach -- it does not say anything about the pilot's ability to fly an engine-out approach.  Would your statement be the same if you had proof that the pilot was incapacitated at the time?  I know incapacitation is not the case (from a medical standpoint), but it is a hypothetical question for the sake of making my point.

Was the pilot actually flying the airplane or was the pilot debugging the engine so he could continue the flight and the airplane was doing its own thing?  It would not be all that unusual for GA since it has happened even to airlines (Eastern Airlines Everglades crash in the 70's where the entire 3-person cockpit crew was busy debugging a landing gear problem and the airplane flew into the ground).  Based on the ATC transcript, I would hazard the guess that the pilot's primary focus until the last few seconds was saving the engine and flying the airplane was the secondary task.   I can not imagine that even a low time pilot has not had the #1 rule of flying drilled into his head "Fly the airplane"  Considering the events of the last few seconds of the flight, he was clearly familiar with this rule because it appears that he was actively flying the airplane till the final impact.  When did he stop debugging the engine and start flying the airplane?

To me, just the events of the last few minutes of the flight, even when looked at completely divorced from the history of the pilot and the airplane, indicate a serious lack of risk assessment and a catastrophic failure of task prioritization.  Was the pilot that inadequately trained that he did not know better?  Or was it something in the pilot's attitude that kept him from following that training?  If it was the latter, could it have been changed by more extensive, more frequent and more forceful training?  And if it was the latter, would the pilot have accepted such training?  Remember, there is a difference between showing up and saying all the right words and actually internalizing what is being taught.

There are many mental illnesses for which there are pharmaceutical treatments available and as long as the patient keeps taking the meds, they can live a fairly normal life.  Yet, the very illness keeps them from seeking or even accepting the treatment.  The mental health, social services and even the criminal justice world has been struggling with this issue for years and has not come up with any reasonable solution.  I see a strong parallel between that and the mental attitudes that kill so many pilots: Yes there is a potential treatment available (better training) but the very attitude that need to be overcome by the training keep one from accepting it even when forced fed by the force of regulation.  Can we come up with a solution to this problem for aviation?

Hamid