"Cockpit Colin" wrote in message
...
people immediately assume all the professionals involved
are idiots with less knowledge and poorer judgement than themselves.
Most
of the accusatory statements made here are incorrect and based on a lack
of
knowledge of the situation, a lack of knowledge of 747 design,
certification, and operations, and a lack of knowledge of airline
operations
and commercial considerations, as well as a lack of knowledge of the
activities of national airworthiness bodies like the FAA and JAA.

Clearly the crew are not "idiots" - it's interesting however that their
are
also comments being made in the media from people who are eminately
qualified to comment that it was the wrong decision.

And which of those eminantly qualified people was on the flight deck or in
BA operations at the time of the event?

My experience in
dealing with individual departments (like maintenance) is that none of
them
ever take a step back to look at the bigger picture.

While sometimes those departments can have pointy headed individuals who are
a bit...focussed, shall we say, decisions like this are typically not made
by one person or one department alone but are generally more of a
collaborative effort involving several perspectives and areas of expertise.

Just because they "could" to it doesn't mean to say they "should" do it.

And just because they didn't have to doesn't mean they shouldn't have.