ELAC, great post, and interesting insight into the dispatch, versus failure philosophy-having said that, it may look good on paper, but you couldn't pay me enough to try such a landing at that airport given the same conditions.
Dream Land,
Faced with the same set of conditions I can assure you that my pucker factor would have been well up there as well. I think the critical difference is training and experience.
I would hope and expect that an operator using CGH as its hub would have a very thorough training plan addressing apropriate procedures and techniques needed to operate there safely. Added to that training would be the built up experience of the pilots who see the airfield regularly and develop a keen understanding of what the best ways of conducting the approach and landing are.
Lacking that training and experience you and I would quite rightly approach the task with more skepticism and with greater margins necessary. One of the big unresolveds of this accident is how it happened to a Captain with such a high level of experience operating into CGH. He likely had made literally thousands of landings there.
ELAC