however the VP flt ops (somewhat older, and certainly wiser) suggested that, in his opinion, the Captain excercised good judgement, and indeed that is why the company pays him the big bucks
That story reminds me of the post incident investigation interview that I was part of that was conducted with a Sr VP of Operations, following a near accident.
During the interview I had posed a question to this chief about the Capts decision process and was basically told that the captain is the captain.
As far as I was concerned that was sufficient for me to conclude that we had found the weak link in the causal findings and it was the Sr VP of Operations, and not the Captain.