Phantom Driver;
Thanks. What you posted needed saying right from the beginning of this tangential discussion on circling approaches. Airlines today have demonstrated that they are unwilling and/or incapable of teaching and checking such maneuvers and have rightly restricted/prohibited their use.
The A321 flight and nav displays provide a rich visual environment in which may be readily seen the airplane's situation and environment. The technology is easy to use and not that difficult to confirm what should remain a visual approach. Proficiency in autoflight as employed by the Airbus means that crews trained to such a level where both crew coordination and use of all available instrumentation and technologies on board the aircraft should be able to prevent such an accident, but here, did not. Why?
Where is the failure in this accident? Training? Cockpit gradient? Supreme confidence in the left seat, complete and unquestioning compliance in the right? Only the recorders will tell us, but this is another CFIT. Why?
411a is free to call it anything he wishes. The fact remains that few if any airlines operate the way he says his own outfit operates, offshore or no, FAA or 'other'. His entreaties are well understood, but a waste of breath. We are free to lament this degradation as 411a does but "just safe enough" is the reality in today's industry. The industry is as the industry does, nothing more, nothing less. This accident quite likely did not need to occur.
There are many reasons for this state of affairs. They are economic, organizational, and sociological. I, with a number of others, have posted hundreds of discussions on why this is so. The fact remains that the willingness, (on the part of passengers as well as management) to pay for and demand the level of professionalism and highly experienced, skilled crews one needs for airline work has reduced to the point where risk is now meeting capability.
In the eyes of some, this economic "match" is "perfect". How does it look from our point of view?
PEI_3721;
but in poor weather at low altitude the crew might be susceptible to mental map shift;- illusion, wish-think, press-on-itis
From the beginning, I have wondered about the remark that, "we have the runway in sight" and have considered that in poor vis, the captain was looking left-rear at one of the north-south streets, perhaps "Abdul Rashead Rd", for example. It's not as though it would be the first time a highway was mistaken for a runway at some distance in poor vis. I am well aware this requires other procedural failures, but given the distance north, had they not already occurred? I wouldn't suggest this as what happened of course, but the question must be eventually asked if only to be eliminated.
PJ2