nkand, the accident occurred before EGPWS was mandated.
It is a sorry fact that the aircraft concerned was the last one to be delivered before EGPWS was the standard factory installation. The operator had plans for retrofitting the equipment in all other aircraft.
With the aircraft correctly configured for landing, no Pull Up warning would be given by GPWS in the accident situation.
With hindsight (even foresight) the accident was avoidable – why should an environmentally stipulated noise procedure lacking precision approach aids, and with visibility limits which did not match the altitude profile, be mandated instead of using a proven ILS approach.
Local and national politics!
As reported the cross-crew gradient was steep, but also, and perhaps a factor, the Captain had been the First Officers basic flying instructor, which could result in an instructor/student relationship in the difficult conditions. In particular, this related to the erroneous use of the APU to feed the airframe antiicing system, which would give low pressure alerts. These warnings were not widely reported as they occurred early in the descent, but would have been more prevalent (relevant – in icing conditions) during the approach and probably tied in with a comment from the Captain to ‘ignore the alerts’ – hence promoting an attitude that the instructor knows best; yet the First Officer (in learning mode) still attempting to understand the situation.
The flight deck instruments were configured in an unusual manner suggesting although the Captain was flying a VOR/DME, auto/FD approach, the EFIS ND was not displaying the HSI beam bar nor the inbound track in map mode – only the then ‘unauthorized’ FMS track.
The report concluded an act of deliberation by the Captain – descending below MSA, but without providing any substantiating evidence. How can an investigation determine thoughts and intent without verbal evidence? How can a report decide what the crew saw or thought they saw?
Simulations of the event identified a significant risk of misidentifying village lights at MDA as being the airfield.
It was demonstrated that the preceding aircraft flew level at MDA to the MAP (at minima visibility) and then landed off a 6 deg approach – poor procedure design and questionable crew procedures.
The report chose not to discuss inter-crew coordination at and after MDA, particularly where the PF calls contact and the PM remains head down and monitors the progress of the approach. The PM has no way of determining if the ‘contact’ is appropriate or otherwise (a {insolvable} hazard of non precision approaches and head down monitoring?), thus if the flight path appears reasonable (to an inexperienced pilot) then only the late and rapid reduction in Rad Alt could cue an unsafe situation.
Many lessons can be learnt from this accident. Unfortunately the report chose to focus on the Captain, the organization, and unfairly (IMHO) some key airline managers. The responsibilities of regulatory authority, airport, and local area management were not highlighted.