Overruns rarely have origins in a single factor; the much flaunted 'unstable approach' does not cause and accident, nor the failure to decide to go around; e.g. contributors; unstable approaches, tailwind (long landing), braking action, situation surprise, performance knowledge.
Many of these factors can be identified in advance - in the pre landing briefing, where weak or lacking information can be considered (braking action, wind speed), or safety boundaries tightened (last point of touchdown - first third on a long runway reduced to less than 1500ft on a short runway).
I very much agree with all that. The question is, with all these factors known, briefings done, etc. why do people still find it hard to throw it away when required?
It might be something to with briefing and mental rehearsal: they are really useful techniques and I use them all the time in professional and sporting aviation but they are incomplete insofar as the physical and mental environment is hard to emulate internally. What seems perfectly clear at briefing time can be confusing when it comes to actual execution. Which is another good reason for sim practice, of course.
We, individually and the industry, tend to focus on 'last chance' defences; primarily because we are close to these operational scenarios, but also because of human - hindsight bias.
True but normal operation in the commercial world is often not far from those last chance defences. It’s a credit to the vast majority of airline crews that they trigger those defences so rarely. The overall envelope is large but we generally hang out in a small bit near the edge where it’s more efficient. In the perfect world you’d have lots of contingency fuel, only use really long, dry into-wind runways, fly well below limiting weights and only during the daytime at that!