Why are we doing this???
Davinchi,
I am not sure you will find one “right” answer. There are always many variables. Why did you loose the hydraulic system? Are you sure it is a leak or simple pump failure or did it come apart in the engine accessory drive and now your engine may be compromised as well. We have had more than one airplane pull up to the ramp with a hole in the cowling because something let loose and the flying crew didn’t know the extent of the problem.
Last winter I had an air turn back after loosing an engine driven hydraulic pump on an engine’s maiden (NG-700) flight. The engine driven pump tore itself apart due to a misplaced restrictor contaminating the entire hydraulic system with shredded/pulverized metal and pump components.
In the NG you have a couple of lights and some gauges that monitor pump output and system quantity –that’s it. It’s hardly exhaustive knowledge of the malfunction. What’s the point of pushing on?
I might handle the scenario differently if I was coming out of some isolated troubled spot in the developing world with relative safety and dependable maintenance some 3 hours away, than I would back in my litigious home country.
The overweight landing is not a bid deal. Go ahead, use your emergency authority and land the jet at the maximum certified takeoff weight, thousands of kilos over landing weight. Touch down lightly with a minimum sink rate use all the available runway and write up the overweight landing in the mechanical record. You have now triggered a required maintenance inspection for the engineering/maintenance crew. As long as you don’t break anything it’s not a major item.
In the sim-forget it. Go someplace safe identify the problem run the appropriate checklist, coordinate with ATC/dispatch/maintenance/flight attendants do whatever the necessary performance calculations and come back and land.
Would you have taken the failed hydraulic system airborne? Now that it has occurred, and you are airborne, what are the advantages of pressing on? From a liability standpoint there are many disadvantages to that course of action should the problem compound itself. As pilots sometimes our collective “get the mission accomplished to the destination” instinct may lead us down a path we should not be on.