Multi Engine Blog 4

Reading the article about the Aspen crash my first thought was they are going to get to Aspen after night.  they ended up crashing 34 minuets after sunset, 4 minutes after night.  The instrument approach at Aspen closes at night.  The pilots had 4 minutes before crashing where they should have said landing instrument is now illegal and called the approach off. 
One of the main factors that lead to the crash was weather.  If the flight had been VFR they likely would have been fine.  Another factor was pressure to complete the flight.  The pilots wanted to get their passengers to their destination for their meeting and to make the clients and boss happy rather than divert.  I think this should not have been a factor, they were past night fall and three other aircraft had gone missed before they got to the airport.  There was no reason for these pilots to expect to be able to land.  Their alternate would have been perfectly acceptable and had pretty good conditions.  No company would get mad at pilots for being safe and diverting especially considering using the instrument approach was illegal at night.  It was also partly the passengers fault they were late because they were in no hurry to takeoff.  It would not have been fair for them to be upset at diverting.  I do not think the pilots job would have been at stake in any way.
The Biggest reason they crashed was poor decision making.  There were three aircraft that went missed and they were doing the approach after night.  This should have been two big clues that they could not land.  I think the error chain began by starting the approach in the first place, they could tell they would not land until after night. It continued by not calling it off after three other aircraft went missed.  They next continued after night was official and the approach illegal, and they descended below minimums.  I think the right decision would have been to divert to the alternate before even trying to land at Aspen and give the passengers a little bit of extra time to drive to their destination.