Bingo! I think we all assume that the approach was something abnormal and causing the crew to stress and overload. However, the way aircraft touched the runway (no excessive vertical speed) suggest that had the pilots not forgot to release the gear down, or check the correct status of the gear lever (in fact that they lowered and raised them up again at 1700ft) that they were expected to have a "normal landing" and were "comfortable" with the manner they approached it, and as I said before this flight never made into the news. It looks like that actual situation did not go to catastrophic until they realised that aircraft is not slowing down, reverse is not activating and plane just glides on the ground effect over the runway and it downed on them that something bad happened and it is time to abort landing. So this wayward approach might not been the first time something like this happened, and hence they were confident it will work again, hence again deliberately ignoring the warnings and refusing the most logical way to do the orbit, etc. This version will fit most of the fact presented so far, without too much of additional ifs.
Difficult for me to agree with that. Even had this aircraft its gear down, they were way too fast at touch down. I don’t remember whether they were at 190 kts, see 210 kts when above runway threshold. So between 50 to 70 kts above normal approach speed.
1) In absence of flap/slat malfunction there’s no objective reason to be that far above normal approach speed. On the A330 I’m rated on, no flap/no slat approach and landing is conducted at VRF + 50 (VRF + 45 above threshold), so we’re in about the same range. With full reverse and max manual braking, you have to add about 1000 meters to normal landing distance. I don’t know Karachi’s Rwy 25L figures, but even with a touch-down on normal touch-down area, 300 meters after threshold, I’m not sure they wouldn't have ended in the grass or in the mud (or in airfield fence) beyond runway end. With maybe the aircraft burning. You will tell me, way better than a dead stick crash into a building, but when I’m purchasing a plane ticket I expect leaving the plane on a stair or on a jetway to the terminal and not on an escape slide in the mud.
2) We may like it or not but we have SOP’s to follow. Configuration setting, check-lists, proper briefings in proper time, stabilization threshold altitude, speed range above runway threshold, etc. All these haven’t been invented by somewhat obscure ‘‘suit’’ spending his day in an office from 9 AM to 6 PM just for bothering pilots, but taking account of decades of aircraft accidents, they have been determined as being gateways to better safety. So one cannot accept these being put aside by a a so feeling overconfident crew. It’s just not acceptable.
What I’m meaning with all the above is that I can’t believe that even in a ‘‘macho-attitude’’ culturally oriented country, a flight crew could escape that far from accepted habits. But maybe I’m naive, after all..
