Originally Posted by
jungle
While the discussion of approach criteria, Glidepath angles and TCHs has been informative, it is doubtful all that had anything to do with this accident.
How many aircraft crashed short of the runway on this approach during all the years it was in service? One?
Much has been made of the fact that it was VFR, a night approach into a black hole may meet the technical definition, but who would try that without reference to instruments?
+1 on this post.
This thread should be split into a discussion about the accident causal factors and a discussion on TERPS and FAA 8260 series pubs. The discussion about approach construction is a good exercise for those that don't know how approaches are constructed (i.e. using obstacle departure criteria to determine approach criteria) but it is distracting from knowing the cause.