We can all feel high and mighty, believing that we are somehow immune to similar errors, but that is just a lie to make ourselves feel better. Truth is, we all make errors every single flight, the whole goal is to catch those errors as soon as possible. Sometimes it takes longer than other times to catch the mistake, but they did prior to causing an accident, so live and learn and fly another day.
I don't think anyone is being high and mighty or acting immune. However lets not make excuses such as "there are lots of gotcha's here", and lets be honest about why or how the situation developed. Bottom line is, this was getting an airplane from point A to point B, albeit a short distance and a non-standard operation, but nothing that should've been a difficult or overly taxing task either.
Also, a clear VMC day in a modern airplane is, in my humble opinion, a significantly higher workload environment. Instead of just staring at the pretty colored screens and needles you now have to look outside and clear, while moving at ~250kts, while getting all your stuff set up from takeoff to landing in a very short amount of time. Airliners don't exactly have the best outward visibility. And when you start looking outside your cross check of all the pretty pink goo that you were looking at drops out a bit, especially once you "know" you have the field in sight. Instead of crucifying the pilots, lets learn something and go forward.
Yes, I agree. That's why when performing a flight operation visual only, lower level within a terminal environment [and not usually performed] and not having the luxury of all the colored screens while sitting back and relaxing at FL350 on autopilot; there has to be a certain amount of preplanning and SA building in order to get and remain ahead of the game; you know...Back-to-Basics 101 stuff.
The learning comes from pilots being honest with why this occurred and taking those lessons forward; not from making excuses about why this basic operation was so apparently difficult.
The pilots made a mistake. The mistake was caught and corrected with no foul. Now the learning begins through honest breakdown of the situation so these guys, as well as others, can avoid a similar circumstance.
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