A pedantic but serious safety point is that modern aircraft are fitted with Enhanced GPWS (EGPWS); the continuing use of ‘GPWS’ can be misleading and may result in crews failing to understand the important differences between systems. There are several important improvements with the new EGPWS (TAWS) and the older GPWS (egpws,com). In addition to advancing the alerts and warnings and providing graphic displays, EGPWS is much more reliable, up to 100 times better. See
“The last line of Defence” and the previous articles on near CFIT accidents in last years issues of Aero Safety World. The original paper is available here –
‘TAWS Saves’.
Was the approach to PGF non-precision? It will be interesting to see if this incident contains similar error provoking items and situations as those in the CFIT paper. Also would some of the defenses have helped; i.e. at least one pilot selecting EGPWS terrain display for all approaches, which should minimize the shock of a surprise warning.