Saigon I completely understand the reasons why climbing near a cb would not be wise. The uniform opinions by posters here do nothing but confirm that. But we can't exclude that possibility as the pilot's best solution in the moment, hypothetically based, as I said, on a best case scenario with few distractions and all instruments operational and accurate. We all would like to think that everything performed perfectly because if it didn't, trying to figure out what exactly did happen just gets a lot more complicated. Others here have stated that if suitably motivated they would do what they felt
necessary and then inform ATC. 8501 would have known (and even perhaps had time to check) that they were not CLOSE to the other flights in the area but had a 15 mile separation, as other posters here have also pointed out.
What a pilot initiated climb rate at that altitude
does do is reduce the weather's role that resulted in the steep climb that people are currently trying to justify only by weather. That is not at all so say that weather by itself couldn't have caused the climb, but it does reduce the severity of the weather necessary to cause the climb, increases the probability of weather as a
contributing and not primal role, and reduces the magnitude of the pilot's error closer to the actions a broader spectrum of pilots might have taken. That in turn helps bring the event back out of the 0.0001% probability range by some orders of magnitude ie, brings it back closer to real life rather than a rare exception.
If you prefer, don't give the pilot the benefit of doubt and assume he made a bad decision to climb. He would have made a 'normal' climb, not the high rate of climb that radar apparently shows us. Discounting for the moment some other cause, the pilot's climb rate was augmented by something else with the combined rates producing an unsustainable rate.
And I don't mean to ignore nose, cabin and other such posts:
http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5...ml#post8834676
>Why would you think the ATC authorized course deviation that they had was not enough?
Combined human actions did not prevent an accident, that's really all I can say.