I am amazed by the lack of professionalism shown by folks on here who think they know better than the regulatory authorities about what is and what is not allowed at minima on a non precision approach. If the authorities say that it is OK to go below minima without having the runway in sight then what makes you all believe that it is not. I am not defending Lion Air and I did not say that the Lion air pilots did the right thing. Clearly they didn't or they wouldn't have crashed. I did say that if they had the required visual references at minimums as they claimed (visual references that the authorities specify not me) then they did not bust minima. Try reading the report, reading the section on minima in your ops manual and then re-reading my post.
No I do not work for lion Air. I work for a long established European airline but have had a great deal of experience of flying in Indonesia on Haj contracts over 15 years. I know about the standard of aviation in that country. The point I am making is that saying that going below minima without the runway in sight is against the rules is untrue and is not helpful in understanding the true cause of the accident.
By all means criticize Lion Air but do it for the right reasons otherwise it just devalues the lessons to be learned. Don't let your hatred of that airline distort your judgement.