Originally Posted by villas
Do I understand correctly that once you taxi out your company expects you to takeoff no matter what?
No you do not.
The places I have described are villages in the bush, where runway maintenance is spotty at best, and runway friction reports are nonexistent, so you really don't know what you're faced with until your wheels are on it. If you wait until you have a report of mu>40 and light winds, you're going to be waiting a long time. If for no other reason, because the nearest RCR equipment is 300 miles away and there is no road. You'd probably also be horrified to learn that we (both my previous airline and my current one) regularly operate into airstrips on the side of mountains with grades up to 8%, where a go-around is impossible, airstrips for which our stopping distance is 80% percent of available distance instead of the normal 60%, and into frozen lakes and ice runways constructed on the tundra.
All with approval in our Ops Specs. The point being, it's a different operating environment than flying large jets to large urban runways and it's a bit presumptuous of you to attempt to pass judgment. It's a bit like me who has never flown jets, attempting to instruct you on the proper way to fly yours. Know what I mean?