A Captain should be aware of his/her own limitations and if he/she attempts an approach but can't get in he/she should then consider a diversion, even if everybody else is managing to land. There should be no pressure on him/her to land and no admonishment for diverting.
fmgc, I would have no argument with that statement at all. That is a different matter.
And, of course, pilots should operate within the prescribed Company limits.
But what I was trying to say is that I find it very worrying if aircraft commanders are not proficient at landing in limiting crosswinds.
My first airline job was with BOAC as a fledgling Second Officer on the Boeing 707 which was a very demanding aircraft in a crosswind (the -436 had no series yaw damper so take offs and landing were conducted with the yaw damper disengaged.
Part of the Command training was to take an actually aircraft and find somewhere where the crosswind was on limits, fly there and then practice Crosswind take offs and landings until the training captain was happy that you could confidently do it! (This would probably not be approved of in todays culture but often the training was conducted when the crosswind component was a trifle beyond the limit).
A lot of crosswind training seems to be done in the simulator these days but there is nothing quite like doing it on the aircraft.
If the facts as we know them on this incident are correct, the proof is in the pudding because, in extremis, there may be situations when you
have to land - ok, yes I agree, a crew
should never get into that situation but, in this case, they perceived that they did not have the fuel to divert safely and therefore apparently had no other options.
The landings at max Boeing limits od max demonstrated limits were done by test/certification pilots
That does not mean that the values are necessarily limiting - merely the highest values that were
demonstrated during certification of the a/c.