While I broadly agree with the feeling of shock that an accident like this can happen, doesn't the history of such accidents show us that we will always react like this? (In judging the crew harshly). "How could they do this" rather than "there but for the grace of god...." Until the next one. Or even worse, until we ourselves make a 'human error'?
Isn't this the whole point of human factors - that we are all fallible? When the holes in the cheese line up.............
If I've read the Boeing publication correctly, the speed decayed from normal to Vref-40 in 30 secs. We don't know what distractions occured during those 30 secs.
This is not to excuse negligence if that is the case, but on the other hand, can any of us truly say that in our whole flying career we have never been distracted in such a way? For 30 secs?
I agree that a rad alt failure is a total non-event - I'm sure I've had loads of erroneous displays over the years.
But like all similar accidents, it's the subtle interplay of all the factors that bring us inexorably to the disastrous consequences.
At the beginning of this thread I felt more judgemental on the crew. Now I feel 'who knows'? We need the specifics of the distraction in those 30 secs when the last holes in the cheese lined up to truly learn from this accident.
I'm sure the fact of it being a training flight will play a big part.