For some reason, I just can’t stop thinking about this sad accident.
I bet that the 2015 FAA sanctioning of the pilot - which we didn’t know about earlier - played a primary role driving his thought processes which were also obviously already task saturated and overloaded. Jim H may have hit upon it (above)? So the know it all Monday AM quarterbacks and their lawyers on Independence Ave who are always right and quick to discipline errant pilots won the battle and ultimately lost the war with this one. Had that not previously happened, I’d bet serious money that this pilot woulda gone on the gauges, climbed through the marine layer and found someplace safe to land either by declaring 91.3(b) or just trying to get away with it unnoticed. Who’da known? He could say he found a hole. Even in LA, when the marine layer is in there aren’t hoards of airplanes cloud surfing outside of the final approach courses into VNY and BUR in the area he was in; he was well SW of those. Instead, he was pushing the envelope trying to maintain VFR and it didn’t work out.
So much for corrective discipline driving subsequent safety. All it did was keep this pilot from declaring an emergency and acting appropriately and safely. When “stuff” happens, pilots need to be super comfortable knowing they have the magic ‘get outta jail’ card as their last resort. I’d compare it to your video about how Cirrus/COPA teaches pilots not to wait to pull the big red handle. Maybe THAT is where the learning point for all of us is here ?