The mantra of mountain flying, "altitude is your friend".
You can't fight physics. Normally aspirated planes are seriously underpowered at high altitude. It's shocking. And they don't have much excess power to start with.
This pilot made a fatal mistake much earlier than the actual accident by not becoming deeply uncomfortable at the low altitude perniciously taking away all options. He assumed the rate of climb would get them over the pass. A small tailwind makes this even worse as it reduces the time you gave for climb.
Every time I fly in the mountains I see planes well below my altitude, thousands of feet. I've slowly build up a store of power and thus choices, including more time to troubleshoot, more time to announce position which is a line of sight transmission.
You can't fight physics. Normally aspirated planes are seriously underpowered at high altitude. It's shocking. And they don't have much excess power to start with.
This pilot made a fatal mistake much earlier than the actual accident by not becoming deeply uncomfortable at the low altitude perniciously taking away all options. He assumed the rate of climb would get them over the pass. A small tailwind makes this even worse as it reduces the time you gave for climb.
Every time I fly in the mountains I see planes well below my altitude, thousands of feet. I've slowly build up a store of power and thus choices, including more time to troubleshoot, more time to announce position which is a line of sight transmission.