Snigs
Do you think that I am adequately humble having spent 47 years and more than 23000 hours of flight, accepting, asking, lessons, tips, suggestions, experiences from anyone in order not to repeat those mistakes made by others. And so far I have succeeded (and I've not even made new ones, because I've never flown tamagotchi which always reveals new traps). Thank you for the greeting: "I sincerely hope it will not happen to you ....!". Also because inspite the age I’m still in the air teaching the art of flying.
You wrote
...From what I read between the lines, of course there was a failure to follow SOP's with regards to the published response to the GPWS warning...
From AAIB
It descended to about 700ft (210m) [ILLEGAL] above terrain, while still 8nm (15km) from the runway [THEY WOULD HAVE BEEN ALMOST 2500 ft ‘above terrain’], before the ground-proximity warning system [WHICH SAVED THE DAY; and was not on board to save Scandinavian Airlines on 1969, Eastern Airlines on 1972, etc.] ordered the crew to pull up.
You wrote
…the crews response was safe and they continued the approach with situational awareness completely intact, then it might be said that airmanship prevailed….
AAIB
There had been no action to correct the flightpath before the warning, suggesting the pilots were "not aware of the extent of the deviation" and were not monitoring the Q400's track or its flight-mode annunciator, says the AAIB.
It adds that the crew did not follow standard procedures after the terrain warning.
The AAIB points out it has investigated two previous incidents involving Flybe Q400s, in which the aircraft descended below their cleared level during approach owing to inappropriate mode selection and inadequate annunciator monitoring.
Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum.