Originally Posted by
chris lz
Are you suggesting that it is still widely debated?
No, not "widely debated", but as you yourself have illustrated, there is still a school of thought that seeks to impute motives to the captain's incomprehensible decision to take off.
My point is simply that there is no way of definitively establishing what was going through his mind.
I am under the impression that the consensus view in the industry is that VZ was convinced he had the clearance and it was all a terrible lapse. To suggest otherwise seems to me tantamount to saying VZ was effectively on a suicide mission.
That's a fair assessment.