punkalouver;
All this talk about the AA 1420 accident in Little Rock. Why don't we just admit that the decision to continue that approach was one of the stupidest ever seen.
I think that categorizing a decision merely as "stupid" has a material outcome beyond criticizing a pilot or a crew. It does not produce a resolvable outcome - we are all capable of stupid decisions and the idea isn't elimination, it is awareness. The notion of "stupid" will always have a context and therefore a stupid decision, but for small turns of circumstance usually beyond our personal control, may have been brilliant. Where something goes wrong and ends in an accident or something goes wrong and we get away with it, neither category, (stupid, brilliant), nor the outcome, provides a basis for analysis and, where indicated, for change.
The Report on AA1420 states that the change for AA was an arming of the spoilers by the captain, with confirmation of arming of the spoilers by the F/O among other changes. The report is severely critical of the decision to continue, indicating that each factor in and of itself may not have warranted a go-around but collectively they did. Yes, it seems a simple lesson with hindsight bias but it made sense for many years. I know another airline which, after a major fatal, changed its spoiler arming procedures to ensure arming by one crew member and confirmation by the other. That did not prevent another accident in which loss of spoiler deployment was implicated in another fatal over-run accident on takeoff. The TAM accident comes also to mind although there are WOW and logic factors (#2 TLA) involved.