Having read through the report, I too am a bit disappointed with the conclusions, none of which are really going to stop this sort of accident happening again. Very little questioning of the requirement to fly at night, nor of the proceedures used to try to ensure safe flight.
I find HC's responses accurate but slightly aggressive in tone. We all have our opinions here, and all are valid - As mentioned above, we had two pilots here who weren't cutting corners, were clearly aware of the visual problems they were about to encounter and were experienced in the type of flying. I was surprised by how many night decks they both had. I imagine that on the North Sea, I probably don't personally fly more than 30 night decks in a year, so if they can get it wrong, I'm quite sure I, and most other North Sea pilots can as well.
I know some pilots fly an ILS with the 'Intention' of going around. I'm sure we all should be doing that, and if cloud base is quoted as below 400ft, I do. In that way we are mentally prepared, ready and are expecting to initiate the go-around actions at DH. If as usual, you get visual, then you have to convert your approach and landing to VFR, a process made much easier by the new generation of aircraft that will fly you to a safe position and allow you to get your bearings.
Perhaps we should fly night approaches in the same way. The Non-Handling pilot should be ready and expecting to Go-Around unless all the pieces come together and he hears that call 'Landing' or 'Committed'. I know this is how we theoretically all fly, but I think from experience we tend to 'brief to a landing' being the expected ultimate conclusion. I don't think enough pilots brief and are mentally prepared for that go-around.
I also think there seems to be too much personal pride involved. As I think we mentioned in the Night Flying post, I don't know of many Go-Arounds at night even though I'm sure I've been in many situations where we really weren't best placed to make the approach. It seems the Co-Pilot here was feeling a professional pride in making the approach and maybe even worse, was focused on that failure, having had to hand the controls over. I always stress the point during all night approaches including me as the handling pilot, "Anything you don't like, be prepared to take control and we'll fly away and we'll try again" but I'll be making sure in future briefs, we talk about what to be looking for in terms of the (fairly obvious) rates of climb and attitude. - Sadly we don't all have a Go-Around button !!