I'll drop it, but based on what you guys are saying, I don't think you've actually listened to the entire thing. They sent her in circles and cleared her for 4 or 5 different runways before the 2 "high approaches" occurred.
I've listened to that one you linked and the original which is MUCH MUCH longer.
Are you aware of how long making five approaches into Hobby takes when you're totally confused (like that pilot was and should NOT have been) and flying a few miles out into the path of multiple airliners lined up on different final approach paths? The recording you linked time compresses the whole thing and makes it seem much more confusing than it actually was.
The pilot could NOT visualize where the controller was putting her for approaches, nor her relationship between distance and altitude from the airport.
Listening to it a couple of times back when it happened, I really wondered if she had a CO problem on board. She's not all "in there" and nowhere close to where she needed to be to arrive at a busy airliner airport during a minor landing rush.
Many pilots haven't flown much in airspace where you're the speed bump and they need to get you out of the way of faster stuff, but once you have, you realize your game has to come up a bit. You're going to get vectored off of final and in close on a base or some other method of keeping you out of the conga line doing 50+ more knots than you, and you're going to get worked into a gap in it.
Unless it's the middle of the night, you're not going to get a ten mile straight in final.
If you can't keep your altitude and relative bearing to the airport and multiple runways straight in a mental picture or at least on a portable device, you're going to have to ASK for special help. And even then you might get to go circle for ten minutes until a big enough gap opens up to put you in it.
If you've completely lost the sight picture, you need to ask for a vector somewhere away from the airport and get it together. There's never any time even the most confusing instruction from a controller should EVER override priority number one, you're PIC. Maintain airspeed. No matter what.
They weren't asking her to do anything particularly special or difficult. Fly away, turn, follow the big Boeing that just blasted past your windshield. Point the airplane at the runway numbers NOW or the spacing to the next Boeing behind that one doesn't work. These aren't fatal requests. This is normal flying into a busy airliner airport.
