Florida Learjet Crash 11/1/26: Possible cause? (4 Viewers)

[skyking1]

Nor do I, on a clear day. But it looks like they didn't consider the weather much of a threat, and in hindsight it obviously was.

it was like they had blinders on. At those altitudes the hammers and anvils are not embedded where you can't see them.
It is the high teens and mid 20's when you are minding your own business in the solid clag, and you run into an embedded one.
One night flight as a paying passenger, we were over Texas presumably in the mid 30's in an MD-80 and the clouds were lit from below for miles and miles with ones that were not poking up. Those are the ones that get little planes.
EDIT: For those who do not fly, we were above the convective activity and the ride was smooth as can be.
That kind of thing happens when an over-riding stable air mass caps off the convection.

 

[skyking1]

I'm not sure under the rules they were using. The general requirement is here, but I don't think it's normally construed to apply to radars:

The requirement to have a radar is here, but I'm not sure if it applies to a Learjet 60 under charter:

I don't think those apply in this case, so I don't think it's required. But I've never flown part 135 ops, and don't have a good feel for the regs. I would think in a situation like this they would, even if not required, but again, not my area of expertise.

As I had posted before, operating under 91 there are fewer rules, which is not a good thing in the case of hauling paying passengers who are not 135 charter.
Kobe Bryant was a great example of getting loopholed to death. The aircraft was not current IFR nor the pilot. They had scud run the LA basin successfully for years and that worked until it didn't. He poked into cloud and was not at all ready for it.