The Sahara is no playground...
 

In the past two decades the emergence of GPS, satphones and the reliability of the Toyotas have made travel accross the sahara seemingly straight forward and risk free (not counting the baddies). However it remains one of the most hostile regions of the world, still needing plenty of planning & preparation, as this grim reminder clearly shows:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...j_ChmbTJZpXygQ

As Bagnold said, the surest sign of a well prepared desert expediton is the lack of adventures...

For those of us who don't read French, here is a version translated to English:
Google Translate

So, bad luck, or lack of preparations? They should have known better?
It could happen to any of us on a really bad day I guess.

Lack of preparations hits you when you have bad luck in the frst place. Knowing that route my guess is the first mistake was made when they decided to take a short-cut accross the dunes, without having adequate contingency water reserves. The likely second (and fatal) mistake was to all crowd on the remaining pickup which was then too heavy to cope with the sand. A light pickup could possibly have made it to help and back.

There are several vehicles per day on the main route from Faya (and even two wells built recently), but for this very reason it is a soft and difficult route and many cars decide to go direct accross the dunes, some better prepared than others.

from FAYA ???

No details in the article but I think they did the shortcut from Borku directly south towards the Mourdi by-passing Faya.