I used this accident to illustrate to young blogs for years the perils of not knowing your meteorology, the dangers of night visual approaches and decision making and being overly trusting in ATC . CFIT it was - why? Well you need to study the whole flight not just a few final minutes. You need to understand the difference between radiation fog and advection fog and the visual illusions created by slant distance and fog. It is night at Mackay, advection fog begins to drift in from the ocean over the airfield at Mackay. It comes and goes varying in amount and thickness. The aircraft had plenty of fuel and at first held overhead for quite a while to see if it would clear. The crew would have had no trouble seeing it at altitudes high and low and the variation as the lights nearby and the runway lights dissappeared and reappeared. The Tower controller tried to assist by updating regularly on the visibility and location of the fog (cloud on the ground) which increased and decreased. The lights you see at night on the ground and how far they are very different from the cockpit as opposed to a fixed distance above the ground in the tower. You could fly overhead and see the runway lights well even the fog reasonably clearly but by the time you turned on to final those same lights visible vertically would dissappear again on you and the fog covers everything. The crew attempted a number of approaches on advice from the towers assessment of the visibility and location of the fog those approaches included reversing the runway direction from one direction and then the other problem was what they would see varied to what the tower would see and each time they could not get visual and had to go around. They were effectively manouvering visually in a black hole over the ocean on attempt number three when they flew into the water. The Captain was a very experienced ex PNG driver (I still have a picture of him in earlier days). It was a tragedy but in the end the crew failed to monitor their rate of descent or attitude why? we will never know, both heads outside perhaps nobody inside, I don't know and we never will. I nearly did the same myself on a dark night once in similar circumstances on the coast in the northwest of WA, you want a really big fright, try a banked attitude at night base to final for the third time, looking for lights head out and then back in to find the ROD is now approaching 1000 fpm and your literally just about tot hit the ground. I got a big frightt but survived never flew a night approach like that ever again. The lessons I took from this are all listed above at some point you have to make a decision to get the f*^& out of there and go somewhere else. They could have done that but didn't. Sad but true. I criticise nobody but like all accidents lots of issues build and in the end get you unless you stop the process early.