Modern planes have some kind of alarm telling the pilots the plane is too low, but nevertheless land crashes are still happening. The point is that an El Al captain "was doing things very wrong" and this is very serious and not normal.

Re LY 1862, the pylon design is considered to be the cause of the accident. According to the inquiry, the plane went through maintenance checks as scheduled. But it is also known that a more thorough check of the problematic area could have shown corrosion signs. Just a few days before the catastrophe, Boeing emitted a special notice urging all 747-200 Cargo operators to make additional checks of the pylons; this was the consequence of the Taiwan crash.