My comments are from knowing the aircraft, and what its like to fly one around the pacific.
at full fuel he should have had enough fuel for an approach and diversion to NWWW, and this should have been part of his planning and descent briefing. ie, if we are not visual at the minima, we will comence the missed approach and set course of ??? for our alternate NWWW. I have said exactly that in a briefing there myself.
I know when we use to do trips to AGGH we had a PNR figured out which we updated continuously on the way, I would always brief my FO that if we didnt have an actual weather, that was better than the allternate minima we would divert,(I know someone will comment on why use the alternate minima blah blah blah...... because at this stage we are still planning to go there we aren't there yet, and airports in the pacific especially AGGH always forecast weather to be better than it is. I have got visual well below what was forecast to be there a number of times)
My PNRs were not flexible I would always have stuck to it (PNR usually worked out to be at TOD or just prior), I did have one flight that we didnt get contact with the tower until just prior to our PNR (about 3 mins before) and I had started getting ready for the diversion, and about to action it when we finally got contact. I know fuel isn't something you can play around with!
I have made some decision that pelair didnt like here and there but as soon as you pointed out you weren't comfortable using a certain airfield due to weather or distance of alternates and wouldn't use it for that flight they soon backed down. I diverted after a missed approach from one point to an alternate I chose, had the CP ring me and say why the bloody hell have you gone there, my answer was because I was PIC and thats were I decided to go! the answer from WM was oh ok fair enough.
I would just not be surprised if he didnt get weather up dates or monitor how much fuel he was burning on his way there or recalculating his min safe diversion fuel, which is something I and all the guys I flew with did, if he had been running an as you go graph, that was the norm in pelair when I was there he would have had a better awareness of the situation and doubt he would have screwed around doing approaches rather than diverting after the first one or even diverting before top of descent if he didnt have enough fuel to divert after an approach, especially when the last metar had OVC002.
I know everyone comments on how its easy to look back from the comfort of your armchair, but I have worked in the company in the same aircraft into the pacific many many times, and been in similar situations, but its not rocket science, you monitor your fuel on the way, everywhere in the pacific, you get updated weather every 30mins if it looked at all marginal, which it was. and if you were burning more fuel than planned (due to extra wind, lower level, fuel leak or any other unexplained reason) you would know about it and be able to make the decision as to what you would do i.e get onto HF tell them you were diverting and have them contact the company to get everything set up in your alternate........ the reason I know this is because I have done it when winds were stronger than forecast.... its part of your job, there is no excuse for getting to YSNF with no options left, anyone that says there is shouldn't be a captain on anything let alone an aircraft operating into remote areas of the pacific.
if people are going to use things I have said in previous posts thats fine but please dont take what I have said out of context!
and as for the training on sea survival being done before line training, when did they start doing that??? we did wet drills when I was there which was the standard go for a swim with a jacket. then have a BBQ.
The best thing out of all of this is we now know that you can successfully ditch a westwind.
let the games begin!