I had to not believe my senses and look at the artificial horizon to tell which way was up..I pushed the stick down and popped out... Very disconcerting to say the least.. Maybe the pilot got vertigo?
m

I should think he has been instrument certified. But it only takes a second or two to have a disaster.

"I almost made it" are a lot of pilots' last words.

I know just taking passengers for rides in gliders needed a commercial but not instrument rating.
m

I took pilot training many years ago, never actually got my license, though I got to where I soloed a couple of times.

Never got close to comm, though my instructor did familiarize me with instrument flying in flight using a hood.

In many ways, it sounds like they shouldn't have been up there. Tragic crash.

There were reports the copter was flying one hundred feet from the ground at times. Can that be true? One hundred feet is a small distance. It's probably the height of a six story apartment building.

Before a pilot can request an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) clearance, the pilot, the aircraft and the company that owns it all have to be approved for IFR flight.

In this case, the pilot had his Instrument rating, the aircraft was IFR certified (all S-76 helicopters are), but the company did not have approval for IFR flights.

The root cause of this accident was going up in fog so bad it grounded the police.

I believe with IFR the tower tells you where, when and what route to take. This can take some time. Just my speculation....
m