What has so far been missing from this discussion are the ever-present health and safety and legal retribution considerations that are associated with all businesses these days.
i.e. If the TAF forecasts a wind increase and the student (or whoever) has a crash/incident etc, during the following 'investigation' the authorising instructor and ultimately the school will be in trouble for ignoring it. This will be the case even if the wind at the time of the accident was less than forecast, less than the limits etc etc.
Regardless of the fact that every pilot knows meteorology is about as close to witchcraft you can get without actually buying a broom and a black cat!
Civillian courts, juries and lay people generally still assume its all very predictable, especially as the highly trained 'Met man' says so!
Hence, 'Beware the lawyers'
has to be the attitude of the day and so we can expect in aviation as in every other walk of life a continually more conservative attitude to, well, pretty much everything!
We used to say 'If you believe a Met report I can sell you the Brooklyn bridge' these days its more like 'If you dont believe your Met report, you'll wind up swinging in the wind underneath the Brooklyn bridge!'
Regards to all
Xraf
