Originally Posted by
pezetaroi
Outrageous how the Mexican DGAC is trying to make a cover up for the nonsense of the pilots, minimizing the fact that the observer shouldn’t have been seated operating the aircraft under ANY circumstance. The windshear was severe, but I’m sure that if the captain have had controls during the whole takeoff phase, we wouldn’t be discussing this right now. Also, the Union is also doing a very poor job by trying to protest against the involved pilots been fired. You cannot defend someone that risked the life's of so many people by doing something so stupid like that!
Anyway, they’re many issues still to be raised here, including all the passengers who sued the airline...
That's exactly the point. It's hard to believe that there was not something looking very mean when this "crew" looked down the runway just prior to starting the take off roll. Haven't we all heard of severe microbursts associated with downpoors during training? A captain that lets a non rated observer act as F/O during departure is not likely to be the prudent type who would say: 'that doesn't look reassuring at the end of the rwy, let's just wait a bit and sit it out.
I think that a lot of normal crews would have had the common sense not to start the take off roll. The question if they aborted or not, or if they could have made it through the microburst is not important.
THÉ question is "could and should a normal crew have known that they were heading to a potentially dangerous microburst? If what they saw through the cockpit windows vaguely resembled what you can see in the youtube video above, the answer is YES!