Anyone ELSE find this difficult to fathom ?
Forget something important ? Sure--it happens from time to time. Comedy of errors; chain of events, and maybe not checking things thoroughly. But there has to be more to this.
Many folks have current charts on an iPad. Maybe not the best solution but one that can work--at least for SA.
AND you have ACARS and SATCOM. Surely you can get the pertinent data uplinked somehow and have ground staff meet you where you wind up with faxed or hard copies of what you need.
Not fun to make the call of shame, but it sure beats turning around midway and landing over something that you can probably work around (even legally).
So's I'm wondering if there's a back story here somewhere.