The obstacle obviously didn't cause the crash, but it's still probable that fewer people would have died if it wasn't there, and it seems to have been put there for no valid reason, quite recently, and against standard practice. Along with the reports that their bird control devices had not been implemented and that only 1 of the required 4 staff to repel birds were on duty. All these factors together may suggest an issue with their safety culture.
Though, I am a little sceptical of the claims that it would have hugely reduced fatalities either way. Runway excursions into unmanaged terrain at that speed don't usually work out well for the passengers, even when the terrain appears relatively flat.
I'm not an airline pilot, but I'm still curious to see what caused such an unusual crash, since there doesn't seem to be any single issue that could have caused what happened. So far, my best uninformed guess is a combination of pilot error and bad luck: the approach wasn't stabilised, so they started executing a go-around, and THEN a multiple bird strike caused catastrophic damage to the right engine. This may have led to smoke in the cabin/cockpit which they interpreted as a fire (or some other issue, vibrations etc.) that made them decide to shut down the engine, but they shut down the wrong (left) engine. So now they think they have a dual engine failure. At this stage they obviously don't have time to run through paper procedures, and they put the plane into clean configuration to maximise glide and attempt a 180 to try and land back on the runway. Then they either couldn't or forgot to deploy the gear, and floated down the runway partly due to ground effect from being at an unusually high speed, thus landing at high speed almost halfway down the runway. Thoughts?
"Normal Accidents" is a term for when things, well, normally go sideways in complex systems, and there's a whole book on it. Otherwise, it's pretty typical in disasters for there to be a laundry list of root causes and contributing factors: the Titanic was going too fast, there was hubris, and icebergs, and it was sad when the great boat went down. Could the disaster have been missed or been less bad if one or several factors had rolled up some other result? Maybe! That's what a full investigation is for, to suss out what went wrong and what things are most fixable.
I don't know why the pilots landed the way they did but the structure was there for a valid reason. It's the runway localizer antenna. It was elevated off the ground to protect it from flooding. Should it have been frangible, yes, but it's not at all out of the ordinary as far as structures near runways go, and I think the focus on it is sensationalist and misguided.
By structure I meant the dirt mound with a concrete wall inside it, not the localizer. Entirely normal to have a localizer, but usually on a frangible structure if it needs to be elevated.
Though, I am a little sceptical of the claims that it would have hugely reduced fatalities either way. Runway excursions into unmanaged terrain at that speed don't usually work out well for the passengers, even when the terrain appears relatively flat.
I'm not an airline pilot, but I'm still curious to see what caused such an unusual crash, since there doesn't seem to be any single issue that could have caused what happened. So far, my best uninformed guess is a combination of pilot error and bad luck: the approach wasn't stabilised, so they started executing a go-around, and THEN a multiple bird strike caused catastrophic damage to the right engine. This may have led to smoke in the cabin/cockpit which they interpreted as a fire (or some other issue, vibrations etc.) that made them decide to shut down the engine, but they shut down the wrong (left) engine. So now they think they have a dual engine failure. At this stage they obviously don't have time to run through paper procedures, and they put the plane into clean configuration to maximise glide and attempt a 180 to try and land back on the runway. Then they either couldn't or forgot to deploy the gear, and floated down the runway partly due to ground effect from being at an unusually high speed, thus landing at high speed almost halfway down the runway. Thoughts?