As a professional pilot having read this headline for one more time too many I have to point out that this is a perfect example of the press taking a situation it did does not understand and sensationalizing it. This is to the detriment of many hard working professional pilots including the ones in this accident. This serves no purpose but to get the uninformed public and the government in an uproar to have more rules to protect us from ourselves.
I fly the corporate version of this airplane and fly at 41,000 ft on a regular basis.
What happened was a chain of events any one which had it been taken away would have prevented this.
Why was this airplane at 41,000 ft?
Because it is certified to fly at that altitude but in everyday passenger carrying operations it probably isn't feasible to get to that altitude. If you are a pilot who has never flown that high before it is a pretty cool and safe thing to experience.
Why did the engines quit?
Nobody will know for sure until the NTSB studies all the data. It appears that either lack of training or lack of knowledge on the performance of this aircraft and its engines at high altitude was the problem. You wouldn't want someone without a lot of jumps using a 90 sq ft canopy if they wern't trained to know what to expect and how to fly the canopy and you were not confident they would be respectful of its limitations.
Why wouldn't the engines restart?
Again we won't know for sure until the NTSB gets all the data. However the engines should have restarted so the phenomenon of "core lock" which pilots operating this engine had never heard of before could have been the problem.
The main issue for me is the non flying public and even pilots who have never flown similar aircraft in similar operations don't have a clue what they are talking about. Think about how it sounds when a skydiving accident gets sensationalized and some of the stupid things people say. This only hurts the sport and jeopardizes the freedom we have.
