I am thinking something similar happened. If my memory serves me correctly the Kobe accident pilot had been rated for helicopter IFR at one point, but the company wasn’t rated for IFR so he hadn’t actually flown IFR for quite some time.
The rating goes by the Pilot in Command. He was flying an excellent helo. Everyone is dead, so it is pilot error, but I would bet the reason he went the way he did was his passenger didn’t want to fly overwater. About 5-10 minutes out of John Wayne in SVFR, he would have been in the clear, and could have seen his destination in the distance. Stupid ass move, should have turned back or ate the airspace violation and punched through on top. He’d be alive, Kobe could have footed the bill.
What is funny is how acronyms change in meaning. Before WWII, when a pilot said IFR he meant “I Follow Roads.”