To Olasek and Coagie, I ask you this. Given that you both believe that blaming the institution is easier than the individual by letting the pilots off the hook, what then is your solution to the accidents where apparently incompetent pilots crash perfectly serviceable aircraft (or ones that temporarily U/S ASIs) into the ground? Are you happy that they have been removed from the gene pool and won't do it again? How many others are there out there that do not deliberately violate SOPs but are still going to have a accident and what are you going to do to find them and stop them having that accident?
Capn Bloggs, you missed my point. I'll try again. I meant people, in general, find it easier to blame a big, soulless entity, than blame an individual, for fear it would hurt that individual's or his/her associates' or family's feelings. I never said it I thought it was the right way of thinking. It can cause changes, that don't need to be made, to be made. I pointed out, that if the error is on the pilot, then corrective action on that pilot should take place, however, if the error is systemic, in other words, if the pilot's error is encouraged by the system, be it in training, operations, accounting, or elsewhere, then corrective action should be taken on the system. If a good system is changed, because of one pilot's non-systemic error, because people are too afraid of hurt feelings, it may no longer be a good system (the law of unintended consequences).
We can discuss mirages, refractions, tree heights, runway in sight call outs, etc., etc., but the basic fact is they were lower than published minimums.
I'm with you. They were way too low. I was just trying to figure out why, it seems, they were oblivious to being a couple hundred feet low.