Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness; Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Landing Without Clearance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors
JANNY5 arrival into BUR at night. Cleared to cross JANNY at and maintain 8;000 feet. SoCal Approach solicited Runway 15 visual approach (probably should have declined being at night). Crew accepted visual approach to Runway 15. We were given a descent to 6;000 ft. and a heading of 200. Turned to a heading of 200; bugged 6;000 ft. on the altitude select but failed to select a descent mode (another mistake). Cleared for the visual approach Runway 15 final at or above 3;000 ft. Crossed the mountains high and had to make a steeper than normal approach with S turns (another mistake). SoCal failed to hand the crew off to Burbank Tower (ATC error). Pilot flying was focused on the descent to get on profile for landing Runway 15. Pilot flying contemplated requesting left traffic for Runway 8 but decided to continue Runway 15 as we were getting on profile (should have requested left traffic to Runway 8). Pilot monitoring stated that a green laser light illuminated the cockpit and was distracted and failed to notice we were not handed off to Tower. Through 1;000 ft. we configured but were not quite stable. At 500 ft. we were stable and on profile. We landed at the 1;000 ft. markers and came to a stop on Runway 15. The pilot flying noticed that the RMU did not have the correct Tower frequency. We established communication with Tower and Tower asked if we saw his light gun signal to clear us for landing. We did; but after the fact as we thought it was a green laser illumination. Total Swiss cheese event that had many opportunities to break the incident chain. We technically landed with a clearance to land Runway 15; but it was unknown at the time of touchdown. Too many events as well as task saturation caused this incident to mature as it did.
EMB-135 Captain reported landing without contacting Tower following a high workload night visual approach to BUR.