Now someone has told us the published meteo it is even easier to understand how they became sucked into being relaxed and continuing. If correct that is a very large swiss hole in the process.
It’s generally regarded as easier (psychologically) to carry on with an approach than it is to throw it away. Not long ago, we changed one of our responses at minimums to “Continue” instead of “Land” to reduce the fixation.
In my experience, it is rare in real life to encounter conditions that deteriorate to the extent that there is an adequate reference at DA(H)/MDA but not later on in the approach, so when it does happen, it’s something unfamiliar that requires positive action to remedy, especially if the deterioration is slow or subtle. Has happened to me twice in 25 years. I agree about the “shopping list” in terms of references, especially on a NPA, and just because you have managed to tick one of them off, doesn’t mean that you are stable and/or can successfully land off the approach.
As I said, it's heresy to many people to suggest this. But in my opinion, it's a reason some operators now apparently restrict F/O flying to a ridiculous extent. The "all or nothing" attitude ends up depriving young and inexperienced pilots of perfectly valid experience which could safely be obtained with a bit of lateral thinking about what actually needs to be achieved. Counter arguments?
We practice complete role reversal down to CAT I minima. Our SOP is also to use the lowest available minima when the conditions are likely to be close to limiting, therefore if we had higher numbers for a FO landing the captain would end up doing it anyway, even just for commercial reasons.
What happens when you don’t get adequate references on an approach using FO minima? You could carry on to the legal minima but that would involve a control/decision making handover at low level, which adds another layer of complication and potential for misunderstanding. Not to mention reselecting minima on the alerting system, which may or may not work.
IMHO the ideal is to provide good enough training that someone with <200hrs fresh into the RHS can operate safely and with confidence to normal minima. It could be that certain operators don’t want to invest the time and money doing this, so apply blanket restrictions instead?