Justdave
You wrote
"I think the basic issues were, the aproach lights were out and hadn't been fixed because of the officials' incompetence, and the runway was dark and wet because of extremely heavy rain. If you were driving in that rain you couldn't see a foot in front of your car."
The accident report states that the pilots became visual between 1000 feet and 700 feet above ground level. That means that even without the approach lights they saw the runway between two and three miles out as opposed to a foot away!
It's fairly common in places like Africa to make an approach with no approach lights. It is not a cause of an accident. There is an ILS G/S and PAPIs at KIN. The pilots had sufficient visual reference and made a decision to land
Landing anywhere at night in heavy rain and the wipers going flat out is not nice though, the runway lights can blur and mushroom and depth perception becomes more difficult. I have not yet flown a simulator with a visual that accurately represents landing in rain although it gets the "eee aawe" noise of the wipers just right!
Last edited by suninmyeyes; 7th January 2010 at 17:22.