crispy banana:
I thank you for posting the link to the IAA investigation. I have to say that I am not in the slightest bit surprised by the results. All of us who aspire to being professional pilots will recognise that each decision made by each captain was well thought-out and will find their decisions difficult to criticise. They all did a good job. They all landed at their alternates in one piece with no injuries to report. One of them was 75 kgs short of fuel.
I am sure that he will buck-up and get it exactly right next time!
As a retired old fart, I will tell you a story that I have probably already told you before but it DOES bear repetition.
I was based at JFK flying DC-10s. We went through a summer month during which I got struck by lightning eight times in the vicinity of Long Island.
One day, a Pan American 747 made a go-around in front of me and asked for a diversion to EWR (Newark). Next morning there was a huge story on the TV and in the papers about a Pan Am 747 running out of fuel as it taxied in at EWR. It only had two engines left running when it got on the gate.
Two days later, I was doing a PIC upgrade on the DC-10 with the local Fed on the jumpseat from JFK. We had a good day out and ended up in the pub. The FAA guy told me that he was most interested in the fact that our computer flight plan showed EWR as an alternate but gave the distance as 150 nms.
I pointed out that we had programmed our computer to NEVER accept the distance to an alternate to be less than 150 nms.
He then (after another couple of beers) told me that Pan Am were working on EWR as being 27 nms from JFK. That is why they almost ended up in the Hudson River. It is simply not possible to get a 747 from JFK to EWR in 27 nms.
Those of you who are as old as I am now will surely agree that Pan Am were the very first low cost airline?
I don't think so.
Of course, the youngsters on Pprune will be asking; who the hell were Pan Am? They might equally be asking who the hell were BOAC and BEA?