Just for a bit of a discussion, how many of you would continue a flight with a failure
And to spice things up a little, and going back to the original post, how many instructors would praise a QXC student for bringing an aircraft with U/S flaps back to home base, and how many instructors would get angry at him/her for not landing back at the departure airfield and reporting/discussing the problem by phone?
I'm not an instructor but if I were I would probably do the latter.
It's one thing to carefully consider the consequences, such as the additional fuel burn at lower speed/high drag, and the possibility of damage to flap attachments & motor, and then make the decision to fly the aircraft to a maintenance base. But it's quite another thing to continue a flight when a problem suddenly appears.
(And I wonder if the student ever consulted the POH to see if it had anything to say about it.)