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Looks like USA Today is planning to run tomorrow with a "Pilots broke sterile cockpit rule" type story. In the article posted online, it mentions, among other things, the Captain remarking "whoa" 1/2 second before initial impact.
You know, I was gonna say something about the lack of a sterile cockpit but felt I might be heavily chastised, so refrained, but they did violate the sterile cockpit rule. For what it's worth, yeah it happens people like to chat, but you know what, maybe, just maybe it might have freed up some time to give a second glance at things and allocate more grey matter to the very critical phase of flight.
Here's some interesting fodder about it.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/directline_issues/dl4_sterile.htm
I'd suggest we all take a minute to refesh ourselves.
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Biggest thing I noticed that can contribute to this thread is that the remark about the lights being out was well after the thrust set call, probably around 60-80 kts. Indicates to me that the rwy appeared to be lit when they were lined up and they only noticed the lack of lights after going up and over the hill at the intersection of 26 and 22. I have mentioned before that the placement of the 22 rwy lights could easily appear to be aligned with 26 since they are at the four corners of the rwy intersection. I doubt if they saw anything suspicious until cresting the hill.