Hey A Squared,
Agree, night and day very different kettles of fish. And the extract you quoted, you'll notice, was hedged with regard to the UPS accident because there's a lot of other possibilities for root causes (although if they knew the AD and the RWY and couldn't see the PAPI or lost it for a bit, one wonders why they were pushing on).
To all those that keep quoting the low speed for the Asiana SFO accident: those guys were thundering down from quite a ways out, were way too high from about 8.5NM to go, and from my calcs based on the FltAware data required >4deg to land from 5NM (presuming that this is way above their approved limits for final!), and from about 3.3NM to run they descended at approx 9.5%/5.4deg angle and ridiculous RoD until they saw a green light or two at ~ 1.3NM/500ft.
It was only after that that their speed and altitude plunged. They were incredibly luck to make it to land and not do a Lion Air (DPS).
Essentially it was a grossly unstable approach from about 10NM out. If they looked at the picture out of the window and decided it didn't look right they had lots of guide altitudes from say other approach charts (eg, GPS APCH) and memory (eg, x000ft over the bridge was normal, etc).
And of course, as per the manufacturer's FCTM (and I'd guess their SOPs), they really should have gone around somewhere between 1000ft and 500ft.
(Afterthought: if they'd taken action sooner (requires someone monitoring dist/alt), and done some of the steep descent earlier, they might have been back on/near (abv) PAPI GS at/before 3-5NM out and would have saved everybody a lot of trouble and two people their lives.)
Apologies for digression, but glad to get that rant off my chest
