Plenty of excuses, but not much opportunity for 2nd chances once an 'ooops' gets publicized this broadly. Most 'ooops' don't get this much publicity.
The reality is that even though these guys made a serious mistake, no one was injured and no one was really in any danger of being injured.
In some ways, I feel bad for the pilots.
But none of them are acceptable.
You fly the airplane first. Everything else is secondary.
No, no one got hurt, but if they had the minimum fuel required for an IFR flight, it could have turned into a disaster.
I don’t know what the filed alternate was. I flew into MSP many times but my alternate would hardly have been adequate for a Airbus.
But as you well know, in some parts of the world you can file an alternate only 50 or 75 miles from the destination and be assured that it is gold plated because of the differences in terrain, prevailing winds, etc.
Which means that one could have very little fuel on board after reaching the original destination and still be legal to the alternate. But at the same time, it would leave none for screwing around.
x pounds to the destination, x pounds for a 15 minute flight to the alternate plus 45 minutes would leave no fuel for wandering aimlessly.
By the way, the FBI and many other large crime labs can look at those laptops and determine what they were doing and even whether they were in operation.
It would be interesting.