OK, everybody, read the official NTSB Report.
"The pilot's failure to control the airplane while maneuvering because of spatial disorientation."
Basically, his partial-panel skills were not up to flying safely when his attitude indicator failed. He had alternative instruments but he failed to use them properly. If you go into the in-depth narrative, or download the complete PDF, you learn:
The pilot indicated to ATC several times that he was having problems with the airplane's primary attitude indicator. He also told ATC that he was trying to use the right-side attitude indicator, which indicates that the airplane did not experience a total vacuum system failure. Examination of the wreckage revealed rotational marks in the left and right engine vacuum pumps, which indicates that they were most likely functioning at the time of impact. Further, one of the vacuum gage system failure indicator buttons exhibited evidence of having been in almost the fully retracted position (the other indicator button was found in the partially retracted position), which indicates that adequate vacuum existed for the airplane's instruments to operate.
In other words, the vacuum pumps, which were the subject of this bit of trial lawyers' extortion, reported above, were working fine when the plane hit the ground. The failure was in one attitude instrument. The pilot failed to use a spare he had (which, by the way, is a luxury; you learn to keep the shiny side up on needle, ball and airspeed if you lose the attitide indicator). The pilot failed to notice that airspeed had climbed to 300+ knots. The pilot failed to notice the vario unwinding. The pilot just plain failed.
Then there's the whole question of whether he had done the training he said he had. He didn't enter anything in his logbook in the last five months of his life. Hot tip: careless, lackadaisical people make lousy pilots.
Bottom line -- you can always pay lawyers to bamboozle people into saying anything, but any pilot who reads the report can see that Roger Carnahan was tested and was found fatally wanting. It might make the greedy widow dance to be able to slough it off on some hapless company. Let's quote another line from that report:
Radar data, ATC transmissions, and other evidence indicate that the pilot lost control of the airplane at 7,700 feet as he was making a climbing right turn.
That company's product was working perfectly until it ceased to function because incompetent Roger slammed it through a stand of trees into the cold, cold, hard rocky ground at "a velocity of over 300 knots." Just because she can pay some lawyers to lie about it, and fool a jury -- which is not given access to the NTSB report -- into believing them, doesn't change the facts.
This wasn't an aviation accident. This was murder-suicide. By means of incompetence.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F