Comment by inferiorhuman

Right. In the context of this discussion ETOPS buys you significantly increased inspection and maintenance requirements. That's why I don't playing this game of telephone. Someone told someone else that something else did something else. Were everything to have unfolded as transcribed here there almost certainly would've been a high profile investigation.

Back to your flight, both the FAA and EASA require airliners to have a minimum equipment list (MEL). It's entirely unrelated to ETOPS (overwater flights). This list describes what equipment is required to be functional, what you can fly without and when. What's on the list is all going to come down to what kind of plane we're talking about. Could be you're not allowed to fly without a functional RAT ever. Could be that you can fly without a RAT as long as something else (e.g. APU) is functional. Could be you can only make a certain number of flights with a non-op RAT.

A real world example is that ATR 72 crash in Brazil recently. One of the PACKs (air conditioning / cabin pressurization) was not functioning on the accident plane. Per the MEL you can dispatch an ATR in that condition, but you're limited to a service ceiling of 17,000 ft. Unfortunately that put the flight in direct conflict with the weather.