Plenty of time to engage the auto pilot
Here we go all over again. Why the blinding hurry to engage the autopilot when a competent pilot (not too many around it seems) could easily manually fly on instruments until it was an appropriate time to engage the automatics.
The question is why, after a successful 'practice' 2 hours earlier, would the 2nd one be type of dog up?
No correlation at all. Just because you do a greaser landing on one landing doesn't necessarily mean you will do a greaser an hour later.
And indeed this crew did one with no problem
Just because the first go-around was successful (it didn't crash, that is) only the CVR/FDR read-out will prove "no problem". There could have been almighty stuff ups in the first go around but the crew got away with it on that occasion.
there needs to be some digging into company culture, and not just a stupid discussion of how dangerous the 737 is in the Go Around!
Right on, that man..
Years ago I was told by a "Chief Pilot" of a major, "flying skills are not a priority in our airline.
At least he was up front about it. "Flying skills are not a priority in our airline" is almost certainly true of all major airlines along with the vast majority of other operators of jet transports. Lip service is almost invariably paid by ops management to the desirability of maintain instrument flying skills, but they don't really believe it of course. The term `Technical Corruption` comes to mind. As one Boeing 787 test pilot was heard to say: "We built the 787 with the assumption it will be flown by incompetent pilots".