Last month I wrote about my preference for RNAV approaches versus ILSs in most but not all situations. Earlier this year there was a fatal accident in a Cirrus SR22 in Bar Harbor, Maine, in which the pilot’s choice of an ILS versus an RNAV approach had a direct impact on the outcome.
In his book Pre-Accident Investigations, safety expert Todd Conklin wrote that “aviation accidents are the unexpected combination of normal aviation variability.” In this accident, if some variables were different, there could have been a more positive outcome. Instead, as you’ll see, the challenges this pilot faced kept stacking up.
