Originally Posted by
etudiant
As the weight was low and the flight downhill, maybe it was a reasonable gamble.
I don't know what pressures the pilot/operator was under.
In any case a tribute to the resilience of these machines, they even work when busted.
Reasonable game? To take off with the tailboom's structural integrity so severely compromised? Your line of thinking just boggles my mind.
The only pressure that could justify that take-off in my book would be something like a rapidly approaching tsunami or pyroclastic flow with no other possible means of evacuation.
No wonder the insurance premiums are as high as they are...
