Aspen Accident

There were many factors that contributed to this accident; all of them were human error.  The first mistake made was that the Pilot and Co Pilot decided to fly to Aspen when they were already running late, and knew the weather was not great.  This started the error chain, because the crew had a rushed attitude and were already irritated by the passanger wanting them to get there on time.  Another error was that neither them nor the Tower knew about the published NOTAMS that there should not be any circle to land or straight in approaches at night, so the controller never should have cleared them to land.  The airplane was also configured wrong, which contributed to the fast descent rate (way faster than the published descent rate of 400 f.p.m.).  The crew were experiencing a bit of vertigo, because they thought they saw the runway lights on the wrong side than where they really were, and reported runway in sight.  They should have looked at and trusted what their instruments said, which is one of the number one rules to follow when flying in IFR conditions.  If this were me, I would have never taken off in the first place, or diverted to the other airport after hearing that numerous planes were going around and that I was past the night landing cut-off time for noise abatement.