Rainboe take care with definitions “A gust is only a short duration peak of the wind” (#3).
The authors of ‘Safety aspects of aircraft operations in crosswind’ define, with good reason, a gust as “Substantial deviations of the mean wind speed over a time period”. The method of reporting filters the higher frequency peaks in wind speed which are less relevant to performance, which in many cases pilots use to support a decision to reduce or to discount gusts. Note in fig 4 that the maximum reported wind speed (gust) is not the same as the actual and higher maximum wind speed. Furthermore I don’t see that the report supports a conclusion that when landing it is ‘overwhelmingly likely’ that a gust would not be encountered. Page 15 – 16:
Overall it can be concluded from the example, that a reasonable probability does exist, that while wind reports to the pilot do indicate that crosswind is not exceeding 15 Kt, in reality the actual encountered crosswind during the landing phase can deviate 10 Kt or even more from the reported wind. For even higher reported crosswinds, deviations may increase accordingly.
See fig 13, where the crosswind includes the gust; the risks during landing increase rapidly above 15kts. The crosswind accident rates are shown in fig 14, again including gusts.
From the conclusions:-
Gusty wind is the most important contributing factor in crosswind-related accidents and incidents. It can be noted that the strength of the gustiness depends mainly on the total wind, which can be much stronger than the crosswind component itself. The probability of the occurrence of a crosswind related accident increases with increasing crosswind conditions. Statistical evidence, based on historic accident data, shows that the accident risk increases exponentially when operating in conditions with crosswind exceeding 20 Kt, including gust.
“Adhere to the Ops Manual” – yes, but check that the advice is based on fact.