I always wait during these discussions for someone to check my profile, and without knowing whether or not I am a pilot or have ever flown in a multi-crew environment, assume I am “just an IT consultant” and therefore devalue what I might have to say.
Okay, even if I had never set foot on an Aircraft before, I can tell you that blaming men who are dead and can not answer back is wrong. Two dead F/Es, one didn’t stop 4 engines and therefore killed 480 people, one did stop one engine and therefore killed 120 people. Don’t you think this is wrong?
This was an event that happened because many actions were and were not taken. If we are seeking one arse to kick then to me the more obvious arse is the Engineering department that allowed the undercarriage to be installed without the spacer. From what I have read here, even if the tyre had stayed intact we would still be reading and writing about this incident. The veer to the left, the subsequent hitting and ingesting of the edge lamp, the take-off below Vr to avoid the 747 on the taxi-way - all of these by themselves would have resulted in (at best) an emergency overweight landing at Bouget.