Originally Posted by
FlyerJosh
Without all of the facts its tough to determine. IF (and I state this with a big IF since we don't know all the facts), but IF the crew got to the point where they were so tight on fuel that they couldn't go around, declare an emergency and get priority handling back to the field/runway of their choice, IMHO, they waited WAAAAAY to long to exercise their authority.
And what if the ATIS varied from what the tower was calling for winds? They may not have known about the excessive crosswind till on tower freq and they heard the wind reports issued from to the tower to preceding aircraft.