Well done to the crew who gave them some semblance of humanity by doing what they did.
How do you think they helped this poor couple by flying to HK? They're not from HK, nor were they going there. Flying to PEK would have helped them get to their destination faster than carrying on to HK.
Whether or not FTLs were broken,
This is not up for debate. One does not break the FTLs unless in a dire emergency, and this wasn't one as, unfortunately, there is nothing that could have been done to save that life. American style-glorification of 'heroes' is well past the point. Cynicism is unfortunately part of the job.
I am not saying rules were broken in this case, as I don't know (I don't think they were), but undue risks should only be taken when the safety of individuals is at stake.
Would you have risked your job to carry these poor, heartbroken parents to spend their ordeal in Hong Kong rather than Almaty (neither of which they're from)?
Would you have flown 300 pax while fatigued, after having had no rest for 18 or 20 hours to help them? Do you really think taking chances with the safety of everybody else is okay because you want to play good samaritan?
Only they could have gauged and estimated their level of fatigue and how it would have impacted their performance at arrival time. I have my doubts that after a night like this, on a 3-man from EUR, everybody was bright eyed and bushy tailed on approach into HKG. But then that might only be my weak, lazy self...
The problem that I, and many other, see here is that when crews have to make that call these days, their judgement becomes suddenly clouded by external factors, most of which emanate from a certain location on Lantau island...
Let's all be honest and cynical here for a second. I sincerely doubt that their decision to continue was motivated by anything other than pressure from the company. Probably the same pressure which managed to get authorization to take off with a baby recently deceased of unknown reasons on a fully loaded plane within an hour in the middle of the night from the Kazakh authorities...
(Honestly, how the f*&$ does that work?)