George Patterson wrote:

Andrew Gideon wrote:

It's possible that there was no contact with the tower if the pilot
hadn't been handed off yet (or if he never made contact with the tower
after the hand-off).

He's 1/4 mile from the runway and hasn't been handed off yet?

Or he never completed the hand-off. TRACON might have switched him at 5
miles, but the aircraft never contacted the tower. I don't know.

Frankly, there's a lot about this that confuses me. No warnings about being
too low from ATC? I once has a TRACON controller contact me almost
breathlessly about my altitude (which was, fortunately, a transponder
problem). And this was in VMC.

Also, although I'm not sure how that's come out, people here are now
speaking of the student as a primary student. That makes the flight a lot
more odd.

But perhaps he wanted to see what IMC was like, for some reason, or...I just
don't know.

This does trigger a memory, though. During my primary training, my CFI
wanted to go up into a snowstorm. Not knowing any better, I questioned it
but didn't refuse. We were at the hold line just about to get onto the
runway when the tower talked some sense into the CFI (and the controllers
tone helped me push the matter).

What if that hadn't occurred? I don't recall the CFI carrying any extra
(ie. IFR) charts. And those weren't planes I'd take into IMC myself (from
my current perspective) anyway.

Scary.

- Andrew