Part The First
If it has suddenly gone twang on takeoff, you have shut it down, you are not on fire, you are overweight and can't dump - then yes I most certainly would go and hold somewhere. I would want to compose myself, run the checks, talk to the handling agent and lose some weight 'cos you can't dump and maybe can't land overweight without big engineering input - don't forget, the MD is not the latest of creations.
We practise this in the sim every 6 months and I spend plenty of time in a Bus sim swanning round the hold sorting things out before we make the approach - it is good airmanship, good crm and good safety.
History has shown that when people have been hurried into an approach mistakes have been made and the problem has got suddenly worse.
Part The Second
Now, on another tack, I would like to know why MAN went into meltdown from an operational point of view - don't you practise scenarios like this ? After all, there are 2 runways, once the guy taxied in - which I saw, we seemed to be delayed for an inordinate period of time with loads of confusion on the radio.
It smacked of the 'Airport' saying one thing and the guys in ATC being frustrated by not being allowed to deal with it in a practical manner - (comments welcome offline). I think ATC worked extremely hard, just disappointed that the 'Airport' didn't seem to be able to cope - again
