Originally Posted by
dera
I have to ask - you keep mentioning words like "irrefutable", "discovery" and "investigator" - yet you mention you have not been given an opportunity to inspect the engine.
So - who told you what about the engine condition?
Just like James tried to explain, the trajectory fully supports NTSB's findings, we would all like to hear more where you heard about this "power turbine wheel" failure?
Also, you say "Since he had power, he made the right bank and continued to accelerate to over 150 kts. At some point on that bank, the engine completely lost power and he tried to keep his pitch up but was only able to get to negative 2 degrees." - this is completely implausible. At 150kts you have a massive amount excess energy you can convert to altitude. I'm not a Caravan pilot, but I assume you can gain 300-400ft easily before stalling. This too supports the fact, that engine was fully functional until the impact.
I think it's natural for a parent to try to understand how their child died. And I think it's natural for a parent who felt his child was very good at something to have a hard time accepting the possibly the child made a mistake. I know if we were talking about my kids that's how I would feel.
So you have a parent trying to understand a tragedy, and an attorney sees an opportunity to dip into some deep pockets. It's no surprise that he would tell the father that the son is blameless and that the fault lies with a large company. It's not hard to understand why the father wants to believe what the attorney is telling him (confirmation bias, which we all had to learn about when we did our instrument, commercial, and ATP ratings).
Don't be hard on the dad. He's going through something terrible beyond words. Try to understand the big picture. And if you must be cross with somebody, direct your hard feelings at the attorney who is taking advantage of the father's emotions.
[In the spirit of full disclosure, there are four attorneys in my immediate family, and I'm not a Pavlovian attorney-hater.]