I agree that there is often too much finger pointing and "hang'em high" mob type culture with a lot of incidences, but this incident may actually deserve it. I fully accept every single one of us makes mistakes. We can forget a call due to distraction or fatigue, we can misjudge the effect of a tailwind in a descent and end up a bit high on final etc etc, incidents resulting from these types of human errors are beneficial to us all, because they can so easily happen and can catch us despite our best efforts. We read them and learn from them. My personal motto with incidences is I am far from perfect, so who am I to criticise?
However, there is a fine line between the above and deliberately deciding to go below minimums as this crew did. I accept others across the globe may have different 'styles' let's say, but at the end of the day this was an ATR, there are manuals clearly defining how this aircraft must be operated and it is up to the crew to adhere to those SOPs as best as they can. In this instance they made a conscious decision to flout these SOPs - to the detriment of the safety of the innocents sat down the back who naturally trust the pilots up front.
To bring an aircraft down to 50ft over the sea at 2km from the RWY, with pax on board, against all known SOPs is gross negligence, negligence because they knew what they were doing was wrong but neglected to care and did it anyway.
It is hard to gain any beneficial lessons from this incident because it is so far removed from how (I hope) most of us on here operate that it's difficult to draw any useful conclusions that we can apply to our own flying. I am rated on type, this has little to do with the type though. Switching off the GPWS, setting -1,200fpm at 400ft, flying along at 100ft over the sea etc requires no knowledge of the type to see it's wrong. The only thing maybe type related would be the fault given, but the MEL says it is a NO GO, I don't know what or who else they consulted before switching it off but it is misguided and in all fairness we don't need the MEL to tell us it is not allowed to fly into IMC with a faulty/switched off GPWS (if indeed it was faulty). Anyway I shouldn't think the MEL of any other type says you can fly in IMC with the GPWS switched off.
Last edited by A320LGW; 16th Jul 2020 at 20:53.