Am I right in thinking that (although they may not necessarily have been causal factors to the accident itself) these combinations of excessive take off weight, the questionable maintenance aspects of undercarriage, non availability of a thrust reverser together with (presumably) the knowledge that the runway had not been swept would cause some pilots here on the forum to think twice about the wisdom of proceeding with the flight - on the basis that several links in a possibly nasty chain of events are already evident before take-off? eg "We're too heavy, we've got a dodgy undercarriage and the runway hasn't been swept."
If this was you, would you permit commercial pressure to over-ride your judgement?
I asked this question before when we were discussing the SQ009 accident last year: if there had been a mandatory and documented risk assessment procedure that had to be signed-off before the flight departed, would it have changed the course of events?
I'd be interested to know just how many major incidents are the cumulative effect of too many 'we'll probably get away with it' type decisions.
(edited for punctuation purposes)
[ 06 September 2001: Message edited by: Seat 32F ]