desmotronic
But if you want to denigrate the pilot who is not here to defend himself at least wait for the report so you can do it with the benefit of facts.
Another predictably asinine comment. Nobody is denigrating the pilot, least of all me. Evaluating the facts as we know them is not denigrating anyone. And as for the report, it will tell you precisely diddly squat about why the outcome was as it was. If you want to assume that everything he did was perfect, feel free. pilots never make mistakes, after all... well not in your world, anyway.
1a sound asleep
There is a huge pressure, perceived or otherwise, not to have any accident or incident....and in this case the pilot may have felt that returning the plane to Bankstown was the "safest commercial" option. As I have said before there are many airlines that will not employ a pliot with any accident history.
So the best course of action is to bow to the pressure and sacrifice safety for commercial and personal expedience? Ah, now I see where I have been going wrong all these years. In any case, I don't grant your premise... reputable airlines look at these things on an individual basis. I know plenty of airline folk who have had accidents and subsequently gained employment with major carriers.
Old Akro
You should remember that Richmond had fog or low cloud with 200m visibility and a little further on than Richmond the pilot reported to ATC that he was "on top". None of us know what it looked like from the air that day, but the pilot may have not been seeing very much ground at all.
Read the preliminary report FFS. Bankstown was CAVOK with a TAF for 1-2 oktas at 3500ft. The Richmond controller stated that the sky was clear and that there were radiation fog patches, which you are only going to get with a clear sky anyway. The Bankstown controller said he was unable to see the aircraft due to haze (ie not cloud). So yes, we do have a pretty comprehensive picture of what the pilot was seeing that day. "On top" could have been a slip of the tongue, or a reference to one or two small bits of cloud, but it doesn't fit with the facts as we know them, and it certainly doesn't mean that he couldn't see extensive areas of ground.
To suggest that the professional thing to do is close both throttles and glide to land when the pilot could not see the ground completely lacks any insight of the likely circumstances. I'm sure that we'll get other opinions, but I doubt that any pilot - professional or otherwise - will descend to the ground through fog if there is an alternative.
Yes but that isn't what I suggested at all, is it? And in any case it doesn't agree with the facts. The only suggestion that I have made with regard to fog is that it would be safer to land on a big, wide runway with a precision approach and fog that was less than 6 ft thick (and almost certainly considerably less), and with 300m vis (which is ample for the rollout), than to attempt continuing to a more distant aerodrome. I mean, just think about it for a minute... the pilot is never going to actually enter the fog! All he has to do is maintain the centreline for a few seconds... that's it. Easy with 300m vis (in fact, easy with 100m vis too).
And it's pretty hard to hit a hospital if you on the ILS.