Originally Posted by
FlightDetent
I tried to play a no-good-choice scenario, an attempt to show the OVWT debate might be paradoxical.
To illustrate my point, that OVWT can be only evaluated by performance and legal assesment. Any 'safety' is vague, fuzzy, and moreover the evaluation could tip to the opposite side with adding / removing just a tiny little bit of information.
Towards your itch:
The narrative claims that extended flight is not desirable with depleted extinguishers and lacking PBE coverage.
For the unpredictable, the choice is made to seek an early landing, 'safety reasons', technically picking a more conservative course of action - placing bigger margins from an hypothetical undesirable aircraft state by reducing the probability through limited time exposure.
Here is the discontent -
We chose to reduce the airborne time, because the ship is no longer equipped to fight an on-board blaze,
however, at the same time
We chose to extend the airborne time by 100% over what was necessary
. Where is the consistency, cannot stay airborne long enough but decide to stay airborne twice as long as necessary?
😉
In deciding not to continue on with a presumably long flight over the Pacific with limited diversion options, we are trying to mitigate a fire onboard risk. But it doesn't necessarily mean it is a land asap situation.
If the reason or argument was not to fly a single minute longer than necessary, then principally you'd have to choose the nearest possible airfield - anything that comes your way before Guam?