All this going around in circles by way of explanation seems to ignore one key point.
A crew of a supposedly premium international carrier were unable to interpret information presented to them such that they screwed the pooch in a fairly unsafe fashion.
I am utterly astounded after reading the report for the 4th time that they managed to get themselves into the position they did.
It's not as if ATC at MEL is hard to understand, neither is the coding for the approach (I looked at it last night in our FMC), there are no traps for the unwary.
Thinking even more deeply into it, if I was feeling more of a Luddite than usual (no comments please CC) and I'd decided I was going to use FLCH to get to platform altitude...then a basic understanding of ALT followed by VNAV being armed would have me flying the prescribed vertical profile...even then...V/S at about 700-800fpm on that approach would keep me easily within limits.
Is it really that hard?
