Originally Posted By: Crispysea
Looks as if the plane possibly iced over, too. I doubt he had experience with icing, among other things.
Ostensibly, all those things (instrument, icing, etc.) would be covered in his annual training, which was completed weeks before the accident.
However, the owner was single pilot at the time, and had very little time in type.
Neither is good...particularly when dealing with complex problems like high winds, low visibility, pure IFR, potential icing, and hand-flying. There are many ways that human physiology falls short in an aviation environment. The most common is a graveyard spiral, in which your inner ear didn't sense the initial roll, and now you feel as though you've rolled the opposite direction, so, you roll more in the direction in which you had already rolled, tightening up the turn, and entering a steep spiral, and as you lose altitude, you pull back harder, increasing both the turn rate and illusion...
Only slightly less common is a somatogravic illusion - in which you perceive acceleration/deceleration as pitch up/down respectively. So, even though the airplane didn't pitch, you respond to the acceleration/deceleration as though it did, pulling up in response to a power reduction, and thereby stalling the airplane, or pushing forward on a power increase, and fly right into the water.
Both have happened before, many, many times, and in similar conditions. A clear horizon on a good day counters all of these inner-ear illusions with real-world cues that allows your brain to become properly oriented.
But on a dark night, over the water, even if you're clear of clouds, there is no horizon. Those inner-ear illusions are hard to overcome. Your primal brain is screaming at you that you're turning, or climbing, or descending, when, in fact, you're not.
Rigorous discipline on the instruments, and lots of practice flying them, is the only counter.
Most low-time, instrument rated pilots simply lack both the discipline and the practice to avoid those traps.
JFK Jr. is a classic example. He was flying over water, using visual flight rules. But, at night, away from land, there is no horizon. and visual flight rules, while legal, are deadly.
I think this guy was the same: in a more complex airplane, turning, at night, over the water, as he leveled off in a high-performance airplane. His eyes and his inner ear were in conflict.
His instincts won.