The Gun Counter

Juan Brown gives his assessment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n06uxN4hRfo

Training in unfamiliar terrain in deteriorating weather. I think Juan has a good idea as to the probable cause.

Juan recounts his time as a USAF pilot doing training with C-130s in the Sierra Nevada mountains:

If you're doing a visual night low level and the weather deteriorates, you need to do an emergency IFR climb out of there and then abandon the visual low level completely.

Yet there was pressure from those in staff and management to get the job done...that wanted to continue that visual low level in the C-130 once we had already done a climb out off of that visual low level environment.

Here's where Juan disobeys a lawful order from his commanding officer (staff and management):

I said "No, we've done an emergency IFR escape. We're done. I'm going back to the base."

That was a very hot debate in the debriefing room following that.

Yeah, that's probably one of the reasons why Juan is flying right seat on 777 freighters and not a general officer in the USAF.

Come to think of it, I had a few of those "hot debates" in "debriefing sessions" with my "management" when I was in. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I got passed over for O4.