"A.Coleman" wrote in
:

The damned ceiling couldn't have been more than 500 feet.
Temp/dewpoint spread was zero. Says something about American Flyers
that it's taking a primary student up shooting instrument approaches
in low IMC .


When they left ALB, the METAR reported Vertical Visibility 200' and 1/8
mi visibility in fog that had been sitting at the airport all day. Plus
earlier that day the Approach Lights were reported out of service
(though I don't know if it was still inop at the time of the report I am
referring to).

1/8 mi is below ILS 16 minimum @HPN. And VV002 is exactly minimum. But
without a rabbit you lose a fair amount of latitude with an approach
into below minimums. (ie: You can see the rabbit a few hundred feet
ahead of the threshold, and once you see it you can go down another
100'. It's a big safety feature.)

I know experienced Instrument Rated pilots who would cancel a flight in
those conditions. By 3pm, the METAR reported VV002 and 1/2mi Visibility
in Fog, so it was exactly at minimums.

My guess is that the instructor felt that he could take the student up
and take over at some point when the student was clearly out of his
league. Still, I don't know enough about the instructor to know A) how
far he would let the student go before he decided it was time to take
over, B) if he had enough experience teaching THIS particular student to
read through potentially confused signals to recognize when it was time
to take over, and C) if he would be able to take over a potentially
panicked approach in IMC, recover, and safely navigate the plane onto
the ground from the right seat.

None of us will ever know... But we can sure guess at it based on the
unfortunate and dire result...