Originally Posted by
ThreeThreeMike
I made the assumption that during the previous five months the runway was closed, the situation must not have created undue problems for the thousands of flights that had landed without mistaking the taxiway for the runway.
Oh indeed, but it seems to me that over those five months the nature of the construction and the number of lights used and/or their position and/or direction may well have changed, possibly rendering that assumption invalid.
And we do have the evidence of the previous flight who said that on that particular night they had found the construction lights far too bright and as a result had found locating the runway difficult.
Originally Posted by
ThreeThreeMike
The closed runway was the subject of a NOTAM and was mentioned in the ATIS broadcast. In spite of this, the crew made no mention of that fact during the approach briefing.
I'll freely confess that -- just as you haven't had time to read the newest part of this thread -- I haven't had time to go through the whole docket yet, but according to this recent post, they DID read the NOTAM:
Originally Posted by
pattern_is_full
I can feel for the crew. They tried to do everything right (saw the NOTAM, noted the risks of an oh-dark-thirty arrival on their own human performance) - but in the end, they still "lost the picture" in a critical phase of the flight, were slow to respond to their own growing doubts, and nearly produced a major catastrophe.
(EDIT: I've just realised that there's a difference between seeing the NOTAM at the start of the flight, and (not) mentioning it during the approach briefing. Apologies if this applies.)
Originally Posted by
ThreeThreeMike
While some look for reasons to exonerate the crew from blame, it seems to me they ignored several opportunities to recognize the approach required a bit more attention than they gave it.
Oh I have no wish to exonerate the crew. From my humble position it seems clear to me that they screwed up pretty badly as mentioned above, not least leaving it far too late to go-around. However it does now seem that they were not entirely to blame due to various issues at SFO, and it seems to me best that those are understood by all concerned.