boeing247 wrote on Apr 9^th, 2011 at 12:50am:

Wow. What were those pilots thinking? I wonder what their reasoning was...  :(

I think that's the right question there.

Just from memory and after reading quite some reports and transcripts about incidents of all kinds.

Must be moisture or something.
(Sensor warning about an unlocked reverser while at cruise alt and speed)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauda_Air_Flight_004 - plane was lost

We can handle this, it's just some smoke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111 - plane was lost

Must be some computer error, lets continue.
(fuel pressure warning coming up)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider - plane had to land as a glider

Must be some computer error, lets continue.
(EICAS message about first, imbalance, second, too low overall fuel load)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236 - also a glider landing

Lets join the "410 Club".
(CRJ-200 displaying various warnings, mostly engine related, while the pilots forced it to climb to its certified ceiling) - plane was lost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_Airlines_Flight_3701

So, in my eyes, the pilots which feel (too) confident about themselves, because they went through this and that in the past, tend to judge some situations, having their wealth of experience in mind. So they might not rely on indications and warnings given.

There are quite some psychology based discussions around that a young and not so experienced FO would have judged the whole thing differently, because he wouldn't have been that confident about his skills but would have trusted the systems some more.
Now, playing fair, there will be quite some situations where the Captain's experience is the big plus in the cockpit of course. But, usually, those are not the ones where you have to judge about a system and it's indicated status (you can't say, from experience, if a sensor catches up moisture or not, unless it does this on every second flight or so).
The Captain's experience e. g. might be a big help when judging about external circumstances (e. g. weather) or actually flying the thing with "stick and rudder". Also, the experienced guy doesn't get upset when things start to develop some stress factor, he had this stress some time before while the FO might get distracted by the new influences.
So, as you see, the modern systems all need some clear mind in the cockpit since they don't fly the plane and don't take any responsibility from the pilots. They just show, indicate and suggest things, helping the guys in the cockpit.
So it still stays some fine tuned balance to make the right decisions, just like in the old days without fancy displays. Sometimes people fail to achieve this balance, see some of the outcome above.

My personal viewpoint stays that the whole human factor thing got its emphasized character for good reason.
An engineer can always tune systems, check sensors and make sure that everything is working well above 99%, but if those two guys in the cockpit have a bad hair day  ;D things start to get worse while the plane itself might only struggle from minor defects.
Sadly, the whole situation then can turn out to be one were nobody steps out the plane and thinks "I'll do it in another way, next time".  :-/

So your question about the decision making (e. g. do we land immediately or do we take the longer runway, being some miles out?) is spot on the cause of many problems in the actual operation.

Coming back to Lou's experience.
Did you ever had one of those "did not cross the line, but I could see it very clearly" situations in your career? Maybe some where you got years older in just some seconds?
Could have developed because of external influences or by, maybe, a bad decision which then had to be carried out.

Just asking, because after reading and seeing some interviews from crews which where close to some sort of lethal incident, most of them reported to have been on the very limit of mental and physical stress while fighting the plane through some emergency conditions.
So there was not a single one stating himself as a hero, but as a lucky guy, in the end.