The Near Side of any Dark Hill....
An initial investigation showed that pilot error caused the Nov. 30 crash of an Atlasjet MD83 that killed all 57 people on board, Turkish news media reported Tuesday. The wreckage was found seven miles from the airport, on a mountain around 5,000 feet high.
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Reflect upon the "black hole" effect and the near side of intervening hills. It is possible to be seeing quite clearly the runway lights from 0.7 to 77+ miles away on a night with good visibility. However, very much "unseen" is the unlit hill between you and the airfield that increasingly juts blackly up into your flight-path. Airplanes don't necessarily go where they're pointed...... an “into wind” or underpowered flight path can often fall parabolically short (which enables the dark unseen intermediate terrain to claim its victims). It's nothing to do with "spatial consciousness", it's all to do with unseen hazards and the perils inherent in eye-balled descents and NPA's (non-precision approaches).
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So, all the evidence thus far would seem to indicate that the crew declared themselves to be "visual" with the airfield - and that they simply flew into the near-side of a darkened mount - as their too-steep/insufficiently powered arcing descent took them latterly beneath their visual sight-line. The only chance one ever has of seeing that very subtle development happening is if there are lights very obvious in the foreground disappearing as they are subtly obliterated by the darkened hill. However such lights can easily become: “out of sight/out of mind” and those very final developments can be quite sudden. It would be careless in the extreme ever to rely upon a night visual approach and discard any requirement to observe Minimum Sector Safe Altitudes just because you can see a distant destination airfield’s lights clearly in the distance.