BHard to believe fatigue wasn't a major factor. ..... No regulation will ever make it as safe as flying 2.0 hours at 1300.
Bingo. It is just a fact of life in this job. We used to primarily fly at night. That sucked, but by day 3 you were pretty much acclimated. Not as in "rested and fully awake", but acclimated. The line between "adequate rest" and fatigue can be a fine one. Over the past ten to 15 years our schedules constantly transition between circadian cycles. You're flying when you were sleeping the day before. All you can do is sleep as much as possible and take power naps when you can. Internationally, you hopefully get an RFO. Domestically, lots of the old pure night or day flying now run through sleep-work cycles all week. You can get 8 hours sleep every time you hit the hotel and you're still essentially landing with a mental deficit equivalent of a beer or two because you're at your circadian low.
That's why we have to protect ourselves and keep good cockpit discipline. The companies don't give a damn about fatiguing schedules until a crash. Don't accept approaches to non-precision runways unless absolutely necessary and if it is, treat it like an emergency procedure. If you can afford to take a turn or two at the marker while they get the ground crew off the good runway, do it rather than accept a non-precision to the short runway with a high CFIT risk. A lot of controllers just want you to take a visual and get you off their hands. They're tired as well and just want to get back to that hot cup of coffee. That is part of the problem. Everyone is tired and it is easy to take the path of least resistance - in this case, (ATC) "You are cleared the visual, runway 18...." to the non-precision, short runway with high terrain in the approach area, instead of (Crew) "I'd like vectors to runway 6 ILS final. How long until runway 6 is open?"
FedEx's crash at Tallahassee was very similar. The mishap final report blamed all kinds of factors, but the primary cause was the Captain and F/O were fatigued which lead to decisions to take a visual to the non precision runway. No one questioned taking it over the precision runway. Fatigue makes you take what seems to be the easy way out. It is an insidious threat.