Seven,
I am the first guy in line to try to find why the guy upfront didn't screw up...but sometimes you are unnfortunately correct, and as I alluded to as well...
Assume an unstablized approach from which a go-around was initiated...
Several things come to mind:...An engine failure...a bird strike on the windscreen startling the crew...a Primary Flight Control failure (at an unopportune time...Electrical failure resulting in the Primary Flt Instruments and cockpit lights going out...Some sort of structural failure...passenger interference...the list could go on and on...
However, the examples above are far less likely to occur than a simple pilot error resulting in this terrible tragedy...
I am a fan of Robert Serling, the great aviation writer...He wrote a book titled "The Left Seat", which was fiction but loosly based around any one of the "Big Four" in the 40's through the Jet Age...
The Story centered around the fictional McDonald MacKay, from his "new hire class" through his Captaincy of his airline "Midwest" (substitute Eastern, American or United). As a DC-7 Captain, this ALPA Safety Committee Chairman crashed his DC-7 on evening at Idlewild (JFK) during a missed approach, and in the aftermath realized it was he who screwed up...
A tear-jerker, but he fessed up and everything turned out ok in the end...
My point is, while everyone else was looking to exonerate him, he realized that pilots, even excellent ones, can have a bad day...It cost our fictional hero...but that was fiction...
Some time fiction is not only stranger than truth...it sometimes parallels it...