Jeepys
Don't get me wrong. I do agree with what you have just written. I also confess I haven't flown corporate, not least because I may be more cautious than many, and therefore always accepted that my employment in that sector could have been short lived! There must be huge pressures to get the job done. I don't envy those guys.
I have always looked on things such as this as a kind of flow diagram. In order of priority: First might an act or omission cost me my life? Second might it cost me my liberty? Third might it cost me my licence. Fourth might it cost me my employment?
Very easy to run through in the comfort of our own home. Far more difficult when operating in that sector.
I assume the vast majority of helicopter pilots will be ex-mil of one shade or another? I know for a fact in the military world, I will have carried out a 'towering take off' in limited visibility in order to get airborne from a deployed site in shallow fog. Performance A, certainly in my time in the mil, was very much secondary. It worked, (risky shift??) so I can see the temptation to try it in a civvy helicopter if under pressure, and if it weren't ruled out by nature of the category of operation in which I was flying?
But by the look of the pictures provided by SS, this may well have been an a/c unserviceability rather than simply restricted visibility? We don't yet know.