Would full fuel have been legal at the SG of the actual fuel being uploaded and the weight of medical staff, the patient and her partner and medical equipment? You seem to be suggesting that these numbers somehow depend on Mssrs Davies and Aherne’s aeronautical experience. The numbers are the numbers, as you well know.
Who said the PIC is an “innocent victim”? All I’ve ever said is that if he’s to be shafted for the holes that he drilled in the Swiss cheese, so should everyone else that did the same.
“The chance of finding a weather window and performing a successful approach would have been strong.” Speculation. The weather could have got worse. And again, we see that the PIC’s level of culpability seems to depend on the coin toss of weather.
Everyone survived the ditching! My inexpert view in relation to the ditching is that the PIC’s biggest mistake was failing to broadcast a mayday stating the position at which the ditching was going to be carried out. He was just lucky that the coin fell the other way and someone spotted his flashlight.
At least we all seem to be in agreement that even if he’d carried full fuel, the PIC was committed to a ditching somewhere if he couldn’t get into YSNF. I assume everyone agrees that the least-worse place to do that was in close proximity to YSNF, rather than in the middle of the ocean during a doomed-to-fail attempt to get to an alternate?