A thoroughly interesting and ultimately disturbing read.
The crew showed a clear lack of understanding in pretty well all the aspects of the non-normal situation they were faced with.
I would think that all of us as professional aviators if we are honest with ourselves would admit to a slight cringe or even wince whilst going through that report.
I found myself moving between emotions of frustration and incredulouty...
How did they get it SO wrong? The crew did their level best to line the cheese up with milimetric precision!
In any moderately stressful situation we revert to how we have been trained, I think serious questions need to be asked as to the standard of training both these individuals have received in the past few years....a cracked windscreen followed by high vibration indications is no excuse for an almost CFIT.
Certainly our comments here are from the comfort of our front room/hotac etc etc, but given an identical set of circumstances, surely the old adage of Aviate, Communicate, Navigate holds true...there seems to have been precious little of any of that in this instance.
The commander had 12500hrs! where were his management skills? whats wrong with getting above MSA, flying round in circles for a bit with the F/O flying (I'm sure once properly trimmed the G4 A/P is perfectly capable of flying an LNAV track)whilst the commander uses his superior management and command skills to manage and formulate a safe and expeditious course of action.
A damning indictment of the training/checking organization where these fellows attended.
I'm still utterly stunned at how poorly this was handled.