...So if things look alright 45 min prior and then again as you reach it, but then change for the worse 5 to 10 min later you're committed because now you can't go back because it's closer to continue....
Not necessarily -- If the winds pick up after PONR, it may still be shorter in terms of time and fuel burn, to turn around and fly with the wind to an airfield that is behind you.
Modern GPS receivers are very good at doing the math to compute various options. For a relatively slow general aviation aircraft, a change in wind velocity from what was planned can play a huge role in go/no-go decisions mid-flight.
IMO (we'll need to wait for the incident report to find out for sure) the reason he put the aircraft in ground effect was to reduce the headwinds at higher altitude.
Agreed, I was just illustrating that just because everything is fine up until your PONR it doesn't guarantee a successful crossing it just means you're committed to continuing, and if things change in either direction it will obviously change your PONR as well...but at some point it will be to late to turn back.
There could be all kinds of other factors, maybe the engines weren't performing per book spec, maybe the mixture was improperly adjusted either manually or by computer if fuel injected, maybe there was a clog in some or multiple fuel lines either from the probable ferry bladders onboard to the normal tanks, or maybe in the normal fuel system itself, maybe they weren't actually topped off all the way, maybe there was a leak by the fuel caps, maybe the fuel cap wasn't sealed properly, maybe there was a crack in a fuel tank or in a line, maybe the wind was stronger than expected, maybe the flight plan wasn't done properly, maybe, maybe, maybe...
There's just too many factors that are unknown, so we wait and hopefully learn what happened to learn from it.
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