Swiss cheese on your (significance) burger?
Is it not still the case, where fundamentals as well as operational practices and methods are concerned, that the basic model for safety is stated as "not having the holes in the Swiss cheese line up" - at least for the traveling public, and the legions of governmental, manufacturer, and other interested parties who never have held an airliner in their hands in the left seat, the right seat, or anywhere else conceivable? I think it's still a darn good way of explaining a rather (!) complex set of variables with so many possibilities that the word "infinite" might even be warranted. Lighting, visual fixating, crew rest, reaction time, height of lined-up aircraft tail, plus CRM, plus familiarity with SFO, and let's not forget (amorphous though it certainly tends to be) automation on the airliner flight deck.
This was way too close for categorization as "the system worked, no sweat, pipe down SLF." True, a catastrophe was avoided - but the margin of error was approaching (pun intended or not, I don't care) holey Swiss.