The Court of Inquiry determines that cause of this accident was
the Captain’s failure to discontinue the ‘unstabilised approach’ and his persistence in continuing with the landing, despite three calls from the First Officer to ‘go around’ and a number of warnings from EGPWS.
...
In no way does that justify not executing a go around.
While this has been mentioned before, for the benefit of our non pilot readers it might be worth reviewing a "back to basics" imperative.
Way back when dirt was more or less recent, and I taught folks who had never flown before how to fly and how to land, we first taught them the "waveoff" (go around) procedure before we taught them landing.
Standard teaching point, and point of discussion in a few of the briefings, was roughly as follows:
"No approach, made by your or by me, is so good that it can't be waved off. Many approaches or runway conditions call for a wave off at some point. So, do it and take another shot at that perfect approach and landing.
If you wave it off, you get another chance at a good landing. If you don't, one day you'll wish you had."
The only approach you can't wave off that I can think of is a dead stick approach with no engine(s), or an engine (or set of engines) with rollback/restricted power.
Somewhere in his early training, I suspect the Captain on this flight was likewise taught and trained. One forgets this basic lesson at one's peril. It makes me ill to see that the FO called for go around three times and the Captain still made the play for the runway from an unstabilized approach.
Two issues that the organization has to address:
1. Cockpit gradient (and a few other CRM bits) and
2. Corporate culture.
Will the company peel back the layers of the onion far enough to understand why the Captain believed he had to make a "varsity play" for the runway?