I read that the other runway was closed for repairs or maintenance, at the time of the crash. At the risk of oversimplification, is it possible, that they'd never flown into runway 18, even in daylight, and made the assumption, that it was just like landing at the other one? It doesn't seem possible as Birmingham's varied terrain is pretty obvious, at least, in the daylight. Also, the pilots were from North Carolina and Tennessee, nearby states with similar varied terrain. It does seem like there was some wrong scale or wrong decimal place involved. It's hard to believe, they'd make such a leap of faith, that a runway, running in a different direction, would be the same as landing on the other.