Sunfish, you 747 driver has it in an unfortunate nutshell.
Basic flying skills/management are on the decline, following the line drawn on the Nav/GPS screen is all the go even in early solo PPL navs. One of my family regularly checked the bag of her PPL students on solo and found not 1 BUT 2 hand held GPS on one day same student.
I know the modern trend is for some very fancy gear in all classes of aircraft and NDBs are on the way out but talking to Check/trainers in several local Companies, basic "dont turn inside the needles", "allow for wind outbound", "intercept angles and end of holding patterns geometry" are BIG ?????? to far too many people.
As for actually doing a Xwind landing, ???? aileron, ???co-ordinated rudder, ??? aligned with the runway on touchdown.
To be "fair" our Thai crew who fly all over the world spend 95% of the time on Auto, radar vectors and in the tropics generally little xwind got sprung in a big way with good old mother nature having a blow.
How many of all of us are prepared to GO AROUND even after touch if it all looks pear shaped, provided reverse is not selected of course? How many will TELL ATC which runway is REQUIRED? How many of us have that extra fuel for such little niceties as a few minutes "thinking time" to get the safest and best result, not one forced on us by Ops, schedule, ATC and turn around times.
The main bit of all this is the Aircraft survived essentially intact, probably needs a HEAVY inspection, repairs etc, but the pax and crew caught the bus to the terminal, some a few minutes of fame on TV, and the rest of us can pontificate on someone else having a bad day, not us, which is the best way to learn, nes pa??