Lindbergh in San Diego is a challenging approach at the best of times from what I've been told, and certainly not ideal with a potential control issue.
Agreed
As to the whistleblower getting the axe ... so much for whistleblower protection laws.
I note The Robe is banned.
The problem with trying to trouble shoot a problem in an aircraft is that if you don't actually know what is broken, or what the failure mode is that you are trying to mitigate, it is easy to make the wrong decision and potentially make a wrong move.
I've seen it in real life when an engine went wrong in a twin engined helicopter, and the pilot flying identified incorrectly the engine that was low power, and tried to fly on that engine before I corrected him and he got the right emergency throttle selected.
We could have torched an engine.
The gents in Alaska 261 were, in terms of trouble shooting, in the blind insofar as what their real problem was. That they had a flight control problem was not as accurate a problem statement as they had a flight control linkage problem ... a lot different than what they seemed to have begun trouble shooting for.