Originally Posted by
Escape Path
It's not far off the question to propose such an error. ATC is in a non native language, stressful moment... Besides I've seen it being used that way in the aforementioned conditions. Plus I don't see any reason why to ask such a thing at that time.
As someone mentioned earlier, it would be interesting to see what happened with the first approach and why they seem to take a circle to land/visual traffic without telling anyone, as that would seem to be a key moment, everything else after that is just a cascading mess
It really boils down to "aviagate" "navigate" then "communicate."
The crew saw the airport from their perch, not anyone else. You simply do not circle to land unless the view of the airport and your position are within the parameters.