Saskatoon, commanders are authorised to "vary" SOPs in some circumstances, such as waiting for a rain shower to pass. It might have been legal for this commander to depart during that shower, and thereby satisfying the 30 min requirement but would that have been prudent? I would have thought that any reasonable flight ops manager would listen closely to the circumstances of the situation and make a judgement on whether the actions were reasonable, and it sounds like Pacific Blue did this - and found that they were reasonable. The ops manual may be written in black ink on white paper, but the world is not black and white.
Last edited by TDK mk2; 3rd Aug 2011 at 05:50.