Tom:
If it turns out to be related to fog, misidentified road as a runway, or hitting powerlines with an otherwise good jet, it will just be one more tragic unnecessary "low visibility landing" accident that didn't need to happen. These kinds of accidents are entirely preventable using a decent FMS with RNP (at trivially low procedure development cost globally), or even better yet with GBAS/GLS (at far less cost compared to any ILS). How many more of these kinds of unnecessary accidents do we need to have globally, before we recognize that "non-precision approaches" are unnecessary, obsolete dinosaurs, that have no place in modern jet transport aviation?
RNP AR, ah the bar is set so very high.
Then, even with that capibility the runway end has to qualify, which is not a simple deal. Look at the number of LPV approaches that have been denied in the U.S. because of GQS issues and/or lack of the requiste vertical surveys.
The state-certified vertically-guided approach simply won't fit everywhere, not even with Boeing's super state-of-the-art gizmos. And, oh what Boeing charges to apply all of this stuff to airplanes like an early 767/757. Think of having a fleet of 40 such airplanes and looking at Boeing's invoice.
