I hear what's been said about the unattractivess of a straight ahead, or approximately so, landing when the whole area is filled with offices space, hotels, suburbs or evil terrain. But I also hear what's being said about the precision with which the aircraft has to be flown, to have ANY chance of success.
I doubt that the average line crew trains for this, let alone the average single-pilot operation. And I feel sure the very rigorous and frequent training would be necessary. And, even then, how likely is it that the training would cover all possible scenarios that might lead to consideration of a turn around.
Many of the airstrips in my part of the world are equally unattractive for straight ahead landing. But, then, there is often not enough free airspace to permit any consideration of radius of turn, to return to the strip.
Over the years, I've happily settled for the rationalisation that the chances of loosing both engines is too remote to contemplate in my operational environment. The reason I've lurked on this thread, however, is that the unthinkable could happen. While it would certainly mean that I'd be having a VERY BAD day, its worthwhile to read all the comments here.
For the most part, we have SOPs that basically say its better to make a controlled crash at stall than to spear in, out of control in an unrecoverable stall/spin scenario. I'm not sure that I've yet heard anything here to change this philosophy but remain hopeful. I have to go back to the point that, unless the whole crew is trained and regularly refreshed on an emergency turn-back, the chances of success are very slight indeed.
I know that our SOPs won't work too well in many other parts of the world, so "horses for courses" is the phrase that comes to mind. I shall continue to lurk on this thread with interest.