I know I sound incredibly ignorant, and whilst I've gone through the training and studying of this kind of thing (a few years back when I was flying), for commercial operations, it all seems very unnecessary (armour on)
Imagine London to, say, anywhere about 3 hours away, Eastern Europe-ish. ETP, it seems, would be roughly in the middle, dependant on winds. You could plop in (if it isn't provided automatically which helps) a fix about midway (minus all the complex calculation hoohaa, and simply make a decision there and then?
Second, surely it's incredibly unlikely that something will go wrong requiring such a return/continue scenario, but so close the to ETP is even MORE unlikely, statistically speaking. Most things in aviation are based on logic/statistics/likelihood, so it seems to my ignorant non-airliner brain that an ETP point calculation is a little OTT?
Is that how you feel when flying? If a situation arose requiring a turn-back or continue, you could look at DTG to dest, DTG to departure point and make a quick decision without all the calculations!
Is ETP really that important?
Thank you
