"Michael" wrote in message
om...
Peter R. wrote
An interview with the pilot suggests that poor avionics maintenance may
have been the cause.

I wonder how many of those "Loss of control in IMC" accidents,
generally attributed to pilot error, are really the result of multiple
failures. Face it, guys - we're flying old obsolete junk. I know
lots of pilots who tell stories of multiple failures on a single
flight. It happens.


Well, maybe *you* are flying old obsolete junk, but a Cirrus hardly
qualifies. In fact, even the old obsolete junk tends to have fairly new
equipment in it.

I know lots of pilots, too. Some of them have even more experience than what
you claim to have. And they tell a lot of stories. I don't think that
necessarily means that the stories are accurate depictions of events or that
the pilots interpreted those events correctly. Even so, I will allow that
multiple failures in different systems happen and I never said that they
didn't. I have lost the radar, the oil pressure in one engine, and had a
life raft deploy and wrap itself around the tail simultaneously while IMC
and in thunderstorms. What are the odds?

My point is that Occam's razor usually works -- the simplest explanation is
generally the most probable. The most probable explanation here is that the
pilot became disoriented and only thought all his instruments were failing
when none of them or perhaps only one or two of them were actually failing.
That does not mean that I don't think what the pilot says happened is
impossible. It is just a less likely scenario. I think you are the only
pilot I know who claims to have your kind of experience who disagrees with
that.