I find it staggering that an operation such as this does not have helmet mounted NVG's. If I want to I can go to a local flight school and fly a 300C to get NVG current and yet an aircraft used in such a hostile environment doesn't have them.
I presume that the EO diisplay wasn't (or couldn't be) selected on one of the
cockpit MFDs? Not sure NVGs would have helped, they may well have been 'flipped up' at that stage of flight - overwater, AP modes engaged and a procedure in the FMS.
Why the heck do people flip up goggles when in proximity to the ground? The whole point is that you use them to see the ground. There's no point being on goggles when you're IMC at 4000' msl. Had one of the pilots been on goggles they would have been able to see the light from the lighthouse from a considerable distance away, even through mist and drizzle. Unless the light itself was an LED type that the wavelength of the light cannot be 'seen' by goggles.
A terrible waste of life.