C Stall raised a good point, that being that all it cost him was 0.8, not much in logbook terms or MR time.
Once upon a time I did a survey of revenue hours "lost" due to Wet season WX diversion and plodding around looking for VMC, for our Arnhemland 206 / 210 / BE58 'fleet'. It was..... 1% of total MR hours, so it's financial cost was zip, proving there is no excuse for financial pressure to be a reason to 'get through'. That 1% would also have been a great learning experience for the PIC, in teaching them how to locate more VMC by reading the cloud / rain / ground around them.
The other side of that is that starting a marginal flight, for an extra hour in the book, is pointless if that hour carries 90% of all the risk you carried in that entire logbook.
So we DID 'lose' more through not actually incurring MR time, by staying on the ground watching the trees 500m away turning gray and disappearing. Of course, no other company got the work because they weren't flying either ! Even MAF; they asked God and God told them to f**k off.
Most pressure to fly is self induced. Who really knows what happened in this PIC's mind before and after he left Bullo. A commercial pilot in the chaotic bush environment may have a mixture of adrenaline, fatigue, task orientation and greed, but that is a different paradigm to what happened here.
Someone mentioned staying over land in the Dry and over water in the Wet. Yeah ok, but its a long way to East Timor or New Caledonia. Also if you are trying to get to Milingimbi but all you can see is North Crocodile Island from 500', then that's Nature's way of saying you've (actually me !) really f**ked up
210's slapping wings ? So, who knows if that hard landing in Dogs Dick, Arkansas, in 1979 cracked the spar or not ? The thing has a current MR and your endorsement taught you how to fly it, so just FLY IT - the rest is academic; you're a pilot not an aerospace engineer, and you've chosen that. To a certain extent, it will always be 'mine to chose; fate to decide.'
Yo....