Jim Macklin wrote:
I will apologize if I offended you or some other commuter
pilot. But in my experience with commuter operations, and
pilots, the aircraft are usually only equipped with basic
avionics. Further, the operating profile doesn't
necessarily apply to corporate 1,000 mile trips in a King
Air.

But based on what you have said, it is even more of a puzzle
as to why and how did this accident happen.

One possibility is that the ship's DME was inoperative, thus confusion
ensued about how to get that particular GPS installation to pinch-hit as
a DME.

This is pure speculation on my part.

What is not speculation on my part is how poorly equipped this
particular King Air was considering the high-value use to which it was
put. The owners simply cannot escape some moral responsibility for the
accident by not having added perhaps a Garmin 530 (or 500 if their
conventional avionics were in good shape). And, with that kind of money
why not a TAWS?

Shortly after the NTSB released the flight track I ran the flight in
both MFSF 2004 with the Reality XP Sandel TAWS and then with my Garmin
296 in the simulator mode.

With any type of readily available terrain warning system, even "just" a
Garmin 296/396/496, these pilots would have received ample terrain warning.

When flight operations get to the sophisticated level of operating a
twin-engine turboprop, things are bound to fall through the cracks
without some competent form of flight operations management.