NavList:

David Pike, you wrote: "It’s interesting to speculate that if Earhart had not crashed on take-off from Honolulu during the ‘westabout’ flight, might we not still be arguing about the couple’s disappearance, except the disappearance date would have been Mar 21st 1937."

I do believe they had a much better chance of reaching Howland from the east on their first attempt. The leg was over 800 nm shorter, so they would have had enough fuel left upon arrival to fly a search pattern. They also had an experienced radio operator on board. Even if he did nothing else, simply sharing the workload would have helped, but better preparation and communication could also be expected. They would also have been less exhausted upon arrival.

I agree with you that the decision to reverse the route, made months earlier, was fatal: they turned a difficult approach into an (almost) impossible one.