404 Titan,
Nice to see that you are defending the crew, but you are coming across as if mistakes were not made and there is nothing to be learnt from the crew's and IOC's decision making process. Only by the grace of god did the No.1 engine come up to 70%. Judging by what happened to the No.2 engine, the No.1 could have suffered the same fate, resulting in a hull loss. Ultimately they handled the situation superbly , but the chain of events began 4 hours earlier and we are here to stop the chain of events as early as possible.
Let me ask you, if next week you depart CGK and have a double EPR fluctuation at TOC with a ENG SYS CRTL FAULT, are you going to continue on a 4 hour flight to HKG or turn around back to CGK?????
We have all in the past contacted IOC/Engineering for advice/information, since they have real time access to more parameters than we do, but this highlights, yet again, that it is one person sitting on a comfortable chair on the ground with go go attitude making a decision on our behalf. If this aircraft had ditched in the South China Seas, ultimately one of the contributing factors would have been pilot error.