You know there's something wrong when pretty much every (or at least
any) Russian can have a forward-looking hi-def webcam hanging off the
rear-view-mirror of his car, but a major airport like SFO apparently has
ZERO cameras recording general views of runway and tarmac operations.

So now they have to spend millions of dollars, integrate data from
dozens of witnesses and video footage taken a mile away, data recorders,
ground radar, take months doing that to figure out exactly what happened
- when a friggen $200 camera could have recorded the botched landing in
hi-def glory.

Someone explain why someone (FAA, NTSB) can't bash the heads of the
various "vested interests" (pilots, unions) and overcome their
"candid-camera" shyness and install these bloody cameras at airports so
that these accidents at least get a video record documenting exactly
what happened.

No excuse - they're cheap enough, and there are enough of them operating
*inside* the terminals - with no real proven utility so far (because
like the mythical Bigfoot, the terrorist-passenger has been proven to be
notoriously hard to capture on film for the past 12 years - but we'll
keep spending billions of dollars and turn air-travel into a nightmare
in the process).