timzsta is a fATPL wannabee with 200 hours. This whole episode has been something of an eye opener for me.
Picture it this way. I am at an interview for my first job. Panel ask me what I would do following engine failure at take off at the start of 10 hour sector, some of it over a large cold ocean. If I replied "continue to destination" how many pilots here would guarantee me that I would get the job?
Who was it that famously said "just because we can do something it does not follow that we should?".
When I was in the Royal Navy I first became involved in aviation. I was taught about the accident chain. Accidents rarely occur as a result of one single event but as a result of a serious of events. If you can stop any of the series of events happening you stand a good chance of preventing the accident. It seems the accident was prevented only at the last event.
I recall an incident not so long ago when a failure of an engine on a BAe 146 resulted in the failure of the other engine on that wing. In this 747 incident it seems there was quite a serious failure of the engine given the very high EGT recorded. Who is to say some debris from the engine may not have punctured a wing fuel tank causing a slow fuel leak that may not have been noticed until it was too late? Or another engine being damaged or some other system.
Having read this thread I am more enlightened as to the decision making process - at first I thought they were complete idiots to have continued, but it is not as straightforward as that.
In my humble opinion attempting to continue to LHR was the most extreme case of action. My thoughts were more along the line of maybe heading over to the East Coast and land there where it would have been easier to sort out onward travel to the UK for the passengers. If you were worried about the cost of dumping all the fuel and putting passengers up in hotels for a few days then the aforementioned may have been the most sensible way of doing it.
But deciding to cross the atlantic following an engine failure seems like a bold decision to say the least. Perhaps this incident shows that there are "old and bold aviators". At this time of year can anybody hazard a guess as to what the survival time in the North Atlantic is if you should have to go swimming?
Yes its unlikely you would lose the other three engines but you don't have to do many case studies on your MCC course to realise the first problem you have is very rarely the last. Go and have a look at the "atlantic glider" thread as a testament to that.