Kiwiblue,
You say,
"The whole idea of aircraft crash investigations is to understand all the underlying causes, with the intent of improving systems wherever necessary: cockpit, training, SOP's, ATC, ground, documentation, cultural... the list goes on- or any combination of those systems/factors, with the intent of (hopefully) preventing that same crash occurring again"
It would appear that the main cause of accidents in this day and age, is the human element, aircraft systems being so exceedingly reliable, especially engines, that any complete failure of any system that is for the most part triplicated, or at least duplicated, is exceedingly remote.
An occurence that springs to mind is the airbus that did the Auto Land at Perth a few months back, you may recall the incident, weather went below minimums, not enought fuel for divert, so what to do?? let the aircraft land itself. Did away with the human element. I would imagine, with the publicity that went along with this event, it would be an eye opener for many beancounters and SLF people.
You say,
What pray tell are their professional qualifications to pass such a judgement? The F/O? Was he in fact as decisive and insistent as the situation may have called for? Or did cultural issues mute his protest? The eye-witnesses... one would hope that at least some of them were professional flight-crew who's opinions might have some credence, because for sure I'm seeing nothing in your posts that points to direct, significant, factual evidence at all!!! Just more rumour, hyperbole, supposition and hearsay.
Many of those people would have many hundreds of hours under their belts as Pax, they would be quite capable of assessing whether an approach is as per normal. What makes you think the opinions of these people is of no value because they are not professional aircrew??
Driving an aeroplane in this day and age is not rocket science, many years ago when the 737 first made its appearance it was deemed that one had to have at least an ALTP with thousands of hours to even occupy the right hand seat. Nowadays it is not uncommon in parts of the world to see a brand new CPL with 3 hundred hours in the right seat. Have not noticed any increase in the number of accidents, and cannot recall one where the cause was put down as lack of aeronautical experience, although the state of play is changing so fast that I dont believe that fact will hold good for long.