Originally Posted by
longtimeflyin
I agree with parts of your argument here whereby there is an off chance that a pilot could have confused the lights from planes on the ground, but when looking at Left or Right runway, a big red X is a dead giveaway.
This is why I am honestly perplexed here. These are very seasoned pilots flying a night approach where the weather was clear. Something does not add up here.
In so many situations, we humans discover to our horror that what we thought were safe, ordinary circumstances turned out to be very hazardous -- if we let our guard down. We're not expecting any difficulty. We were right about the ordinary circumstances (closure of SFO runway 28L isn't an extraordinary event). But we let our guard down too much. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that these were the circumstances in the AC cabin on its approach to SFO.