Originally Posted by
roulette
Maybe not equivalent (and entirely different operational scenarios and operating philosophies), but commonalities might include be failure to adequately monitor altitude (at relevant distances from airfield/landing RWY) and/or descent rate, which if done would appropriately should have then triggered other appropriate action?
I'm certainly not trying to deny that there may be some commonalities, but to pretend, as some are, that the two are equivalent occurrences is patently absurd. A little personal anecdote; many moons ago as a fairly new pilot on a very dark night, I broke out early on an ILS approach over completely unlit terrain. With good visibility beneath the overcast and somewhat more than a mile to go I continued visually, following what at the the time I thought was an on-glide indication from a VGSI. Imagine my surprise when closer to the runway, I flipped on my landing lights and saw mostly trees. Obviously, I was able to get things sorted out relatively successfully, but I learned a lot of really important lessons that night. Probably the most important of which was: There really is no comparison between a visual final to a runway in broad daylight VFR conditions and the same at night over unlit terrain.
As regards the difference in the nature of the commentary here surrounding the two incidents; at this point, we really do not know what led to the UPS airplane being at that particular location and altitude. The possibilities range from, at one extreme, some sort of erroneous indication which caused the crew to believe that there were above either MDA or VGSI, to at the other extreme, they just sat there not paying attention to things as they descended thru MDA and the PAPI. At this point, we really don't know where the truth lies along that continuum. By contrast, it appears we do know with a fair amount of certainty that the Asiana crew did in fact just sit there as a normally functioning airspeed indicator displayed a lower and lower airspeed, the PAPI turned progressively redder, and the runway moved further and further up in their windshield until they were darn near looking *up* at it, before anyone thought the take action.