BOAC
Thanks for the pointer and, I assume, the gentle dig. The C4 link you directed me to explains my query, but leaves one which we will never know the answer to.
The captain of an aircraft has the ultimate sanction on whether to fly a sortie. If a captain thought that safety concerns over an aircraft were so grave that he was reported to have considered life insurance, the weather for the route poor and the aircraft unable to cope with it, why fly?
Refusing to fly a sortie would potentially have had career changing implications of course, and the decision would never have been taken without the most serious consideration, but he would not have been the first to do.
With hindsight and the wisdom experience brings, there may be many pilots from years gone by that could have taken such a decision themselves, but were lucky and skilful enough to have survived their own set of circumstances to be able to talk about it.
I suspect this will not be a popular post, but it's a point of view.