Oh come on ted....ivor was making a joke....and since no one was hurt, i thought it was even a bit funny.
however what you said was serious...thats more worrying..because you said "looks like an embarrassing mistake". Where did you get MISTAKE from. Looking at the video the aircraft was on the turning pad at the end of the runway. Thats where you expect the aircraft to be. Now if there is a notam to say not to use it because its a sand trap then somebody made a mistake allright...but let the facts come out before we use the word MISTAKE.
I haven't checked notams yet, well lets face it, someone a bit more keen will probably do and post it.
If that was sand i would expect standard airport markings to be in place, you know big X and edge markers at end of runway.
Looks like there may be more to meets the eye on this. Frome the video it does looks like an "overrun sandpit" (what are they officially called again?) but it also looks like a stopway...which of course you CAN taxi on.
So lets wait a little while before we start saying anyone made a mistake. This looks like a sucker hole I could have been drawn into myself, and I'm worried airport authorities are allowed to present us with this kind of stuff over and over again and the feds do not come down on them hard enough (remember the cock ups with the runway lighting when Singapore 747 hit ground equipment on take off)...