... If the rock hadn't been there, they would still have been faced with a 10-mile transit at 200' in the dark, downwind with any go-around being towards land - not my favourite sort of option.
It does get you thinking about why that approach was even documented for these aircraft.
More detail of the combination of contract requirements and regulatory regime would help us to form a better picture of what guided their choices. Currently, most of us can only guess at what their options were.