Originally Posted by
giggitygiggity
It might perhaps be slightly on the high side but calling it incredible is somewhat sensationalist.
This is not a boast and I'm sure you'll label me as an accident waiting to happen, but I looked up the last flight I did on the A320 to Tenerife (sadly back in march), I descended from 39,000ft to 10,000ft in 11 mins after getting a very nice (and requested) short cut from ATC - 2,600ft/min average.
No I won't call you an accident waiting to happen. It is fine as long as you have got enough space and time left for the final approach to dissipate the energy and stabilise and don't have to rush things. This is what was obviously missing here. Even after this rather quick descent from 35k the equation didn't add up. They had to steepen the aproach further and apparently couldn't get rid of the energy which in turn may have occupied them so much that it may have contributed to them making a very basic and stupid mistake. Moreover due to the high state of energy they only touched the runway after ~5000ft, which might have contributed to them trying to go around instead of putting it down. The choice of a tight curcuit over congested terrain was also obviously not the best choice in the given circumstances. It appears they got behind the airplane and never managed to catch up again. This appears one nice example of the holes in the cheese lining up and will probably be a shining example in future training/CRM curriculae.