I have so far refrained from comment on this subject.
I have never flown a Boeing 747 of any variety.
I have, however, quite a lot of experience as a DC-10 captain and have a fair amount of experience on the LAX - LON route.
In addition I flew the DC-10 across the Atlantic (and the Pacific) under two regimes; I have a UK ATPL and an FAA ATR on type.
In general, the FAA regulations were more restrictive than the CAA and, from my point of view, that was quite welcome.
If I lost an engine on take-off from LAX heading east (on the N-register) I knew that I would have to explain "in great detail" to the the FAA exactly why I considered it OK to continue to any other airfield other than the "nearest suitable airfield".
It certainly would not have been a possibility to announce that you were going to continue across the whole of the USA , Canada and the North Atlantic.
In all of my many years of flying long haul before JARs, I was always required to arrive with "emergency holding" plus "diversion fuel" to an alternate.
Under JARs, I hear BA calling London on a very regular basis that they "Are committed to Heathrow". For those of you out there that don't understand JARs this basically means that they no longer have enough fuel to go to an alternate but, because Heathrow has two runways and the weather is reasonable, they can continue.
In other words, as long as both runways at Heathrow keep going without a single glitch, they can land without breaking any rules. Needless to say, nothing ever goes wrong at Heathrow!
So what is my point? I can live with going round Santa Monica Bay twice (which must have used up a lot of fuel) and then proceeding eastwards to the amazement of a lot of people. I could just about have made a case to continue across the USA/Canada but the Pond might have stretched my good humour somewhat.
What really bothers me is the last hour of this flight.
Having got past 30W the crew must have had a very good idea of how the "Howgozit" was going. I would have thought that it would have been obvious that Heathrow was already an impossibility to any sensible person.
So why did this hard-working crew that had done their level best for BA go past PIK/BFS/SNN etc and end up with a "Mayday" at MAN?
With 11 hours to think about the problem, I would certainly not have got myself in a situation like this.
Perhaps the big worry here is the the way the BA crew were trained or indoctrinated. I have already seen on this thread (and others) ample evidence from BA pilots that they think such situations are perfectly safe and that any criticism is superfluous. Indeed they dismiss the FAA as an irrelevance.
This, having done both with big aeroplanes, is a very arrogant statement. I can say that with a great deal of confidence that the numberof US-registered aircraft exceeds the the rest of the world put together.
Therefore, the posting from "BA God Help Me" should be seen in context.