Regarding the normalisation of deviance, some may recall the early 340 flts into Zurich, or more correctly the interesting departures out of Zurich.
But this wasn't intentional deviance.
Despite the crew on return to HK frequently mentioning to management that whilst an all engines operating departure seemed somewhat sporty, the main concern was how does this work when you've lost an engine shortly after V1.
There was even a notice to crew at one point then put out, saying the gpws would go off, but just ignore it if you're at V2+10/V2 as appropriate. Alarm bells anyone?
The exact technicalities have faded after some 20 years, and any other oldie with greater recall is welcome to clarify the exact problem. However, I had an idea the fault lay in the RTOW data effectively being overly optimistic, or the actual thrust they were assuming was coming out of the engines was greater than it really was, and these may have been the PAL340's, but the net result was we were either underpowered or overweight depending on your point of view.
There was another peripheral clue that ATC controllers would often watch and take photos!
Sometimes it feels like they're all trying to kill us in one way or another?
Btw, shep 69 - spot on.