Real pilot on this site?
Saudi to India is a LONG flight. No, it may not be a transpacific leg but hey, it's still a good distance. If there are any clouds or precip and it's in the flight levels, these are icing conditions. I wouldn't trust a weather report from most countries overflown on this particular flight to correctly tell me the weather over my route of flight. I don't know about the Boeing but the mighty mighty CRJ stipulates NO icing with the gear MEL'd down and locked for whatever reason. We weren't there and yet we're judging a professional aviator??? Sounds like the news media. Sorry to offend anyone on this site but it seems that microsoft flight sim experts and 500 hour Cessna drivers are spouting off about topics way above their pay scale and experience level in order to feel like a hot shot. With the extra fuel burned with the drag of that gear, I almost bet it would've been cheaper to get contract mx to fix the problem in Saudi. Let's be real pilots here and do what we should've been doing in the first place, blame management for stupid decisions!