Am I the only one who thinks that some contributing to this thread are dancing all around the real problem?
I'm retired now, but I still remember when I was a young student Naval Aviator not yet 20 years old. A crusty old instructor (he was about 27 years old) told me, "Land into the wind". And then he gave me a long stare. Since that time I've made countless landings in high performance fighters, various commercial airliners, sailplanes, and to a lesser extent, light aircraft. Most of them were into the wind, but naturally sometimes a down-wind landing is required or at least preferable for one reason or another. Thinking back, downwind landings received my highest level of attention and my personal margin for error became more narrow.
As we all know, sometimes pilots get less than perfect information on which to base their decisions. For example, "standing water" is reported as "wet". The 6 knot tailwind is really 10 knots, HUD on, HUD off, etc, etc. etc. blah blah blah. The list of contributing factors (and semi-lame excuses) is endless and there must have been a hundred of them mentioned in this thread alone.
But all of us have had plenty of bad information passed to us and few of us here have ever crashed an airliner, so it can't be the lousy contributing factors alone.
To me, it boils down to one thing; poor airmanship resting squarely on the Captain's shoulders. The Captain elected to not land into the wind; not a serious mistake in and of itself. However, he apparently didn't couple that downwind landing with a promise to himself that he would make every possible effort to exercise good flying practices, especially given the other conditions.
How in the world could this Captain accept a landing half way down a runway under ANY circumstances (other than landing a Piper Cub at Edwards A.F.B. ) much less on a wet runway with a tailwind? I'm quite certain I've never floated half way down ANY runway, ever. I know for a fact I've never landed an airliner outside the prescribed landing zone although I've watched a few from the F/O's seat (none dangerous, just sloppy).
No matter what the circumstances leading up to this accident, I can't think of any reason to continue an approach which results in a touchdown after flying past the first half of the runway unless the airplane is on fire, and a big fire at that. Even if every single external factor were working against this crew, had the pilot flown the aircraft properly, this accident wouldn't happened. Flying a proper approach to a good landing OR going around if and when things go south is something any Captain should think about well ahead of time.
Don't tell me hindsight is 20-20. Thinking ahead, in this case, shouldn't have been all that hard. Pressing on and having a "get-'er-done" attitude is fine, but if you call yourself a Captain you must stop being foolish before you bend the tin.
