Before you 'hang' the Captain I had a different take -
Thinking about lowering the landing gear? At FL340? Thinking about extending flaps? Brings into the discussion, about using full speedbrakes, the emergency descent actions??? Where's this train of logic coming from?
Later he talks about maybe entering holding instead. On a different thread he mentioned a panicky call to stop because he thought the nose was going to extend past the hold line.
All of this from a guy that admits he's new, and his posts and questions underline that. So it's all the Captain's fault? That's the ruling from the mob that wasn't anywhere near the event?
Had an FO, 10,000+ hrs, get all excited about the hold short line passing below our LINE OF SIGHT. Not that we were going to cross it, but that it was disappearing from our forward field of view. GMAFB.
We can't see for about 50' in front of the a/c. So his standard would have us hold 50' short of every line?
For all we know, after several sectors, or days, of similar reasoning or judgement calls the Captain had reached the same state of mind (GMAFB). We've heard one side and he hardly qualifies as an expert, or unbiased, observer.