Originally Posted by
Bell_ringer
In the absence of information, assume the worst and act accordingly.
Reminds me of one pilot that had a TR chip caution and parked it in the nearest carpark. Tourists were a bit miffed about the bus trip home and it turned out to be a false alarm.
Then there was the other guy who decided to return to base only to have the gearbox depart enroute.
You can over analyse and find reasons to justify any course of action if you try hard enough.
First priority should always be to save your ass, not to cover it.
I'm not talking about covering your ass. Making an unplanned, rapid emergency landing in a populated area can very well result in an accident itself. Not wanting to do that, and weighing it against the risk of flying a mile back to an airport prioritizes saving your ass just as much.
If I had assumed I was about to have a structural failure last time I had a fire light, I would have had to land in tall trees. In my case that would've been the entirely wrong call and I could've killed or hurt myself and my passengers doing so.
In this case here it was different. The failure also happened rather quickly, even though it looks like an eternity when you watch it from the comfort of home on video.
But we don't know what indications the pilot had. Hindsight, that's all.