Well, yes -- but the intent of making this deeper assessment is to get at the root of why the pilot may have made the error.
Let's say we do some deep dive assessment and we find that there's several contributions (all contrived for discussion): (1) during summer, sun sets directly behind runway 28R, (2) lighting system activates at 1 hr before sunset, (3) lighting system was refreshed with LED bulbs this year, (4) taxiway C is 30% wider than median taxiway in US airports of size similar to SFO, (5) the A320 (used by Air Canada 759) has reclining seats in the cockpit and this pilot was shorter than the prior pilot for this plane.
If you had an assessment like that you could reasonably take action on some of these without waiting for a fatal accident. The action wouldn't even necessarily have to be to remove/replace/alter these things, it could even be to commission a study to see the wider impact of LED lighting or reclining seats or something. Changing the runway orientation is a very large expense, but constraining 28R use during the critical sunset period is a little less so.
If this pilot made the error, it stands to reason that other pilots may make the same mistake. If we consider a near miss as seriously as we consider a fatal accident we can still learn great things. A near miss is likely only a failure of (N - 1) elements out of the critical N required for a fatal accident.
The point is that it doesn't help to know that it was a pilot error, because a pilot is human, and humans in the same situation might make the same mistake - and the main goal is to prevent accidents, not to have accidents happening all the time and saying "it was again human error".
It boils down to:
1 - Was the "error" intentional? If so, how to prevent someone from doing it again?
2 - Was it a real error, with no intention of any kind? If so, how to prevent that someone makes it again?
That's exactly the attitude that leads to more pilot error ;)
But seriously, it's important to understand how it made sense to the pilot from his perspective at that point in time. Because he believed he was aiming for the runway (I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and assume he wasn't distracted with online farming).
So understanding why it made sense to him can lead to actions to prevent this in the future.
Versus chalking it up to "pilot error", in which we assign blame and don't take action to prevent this kind of mixup in the future, thus practically ensuring it happens again. Because if it made sense to him, it'll make sense to someone else too. In fact the top comment says this type of mixup is rather common!
Let's say we do some deep dive assessment and we find that there's several contributions (all contrived for discussion): (1) during summer, sun sets directly behind runway 28R, (2) lighting system activates at 1 hr before sunset, (3) lighting system was refreshed with LED bulbs this year, (4) taxiway C is 30% wider than median taxiway in US airports of size similar to SFO, (5) the A320 (used by Air Canada 759) has reclining seats in the cockpit and this pilot was shorter than the prior pilot for this plane.
If you had an assessment like that you could reasonably take action on some of these without waiting for a fatal accident. The action wouldn't even necessarily have to be to remove/replace/alter these things, it could even be to commission a study to see the wider impact of LED lighting or reclining seats or something. Changing the runway orientation is a very large expense, but constraining 28R use during the critical sunset period is a little less so.
If this pilot made the error, it stands to reason that other pilots may make the same mistake. If we consider a near miss as seriously as we consider a fatal accident we can still learn great things. A near miss is likely only a failure of (N - 1) elements out of the critical N required for a fatal accident.