PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - 4th June 2010 B737-800 rejected takeoff after V1 Report is out
Old 13th July 2011 | 14:29
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The Ancient Geek
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Joined: May 2010
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From: UK
I recommend reading this report:

http://www.nlr-atsi.nl/eCache/ATS/15/694.pdf
Title "REJECTING A TAKEOFF AFTER V1…WHY DOES IT (STILL)
Interesting.
Firstly the report only considers 'accidents' and 'serious incidents' which means that it does not include cases where the aircraft stopped safely on the runway with no damage or injuries. It is probably safe to assume that this implies that the decision to reject was incorrect but safe in such cases.

In the cases considered between 1994 and 2008 31.9% of the aborts were justified, 44.4% not, and 23.6% unknown. This does not seem unreasonable given natural human survival instinct and the need for a very rapid decision.

The critical problem here is the available decision time. Slow decisions are very dangerous due to rising speed and rapidly reducing space. Given that almost a third of the aborts were justified we must assume that a high proportion of these would have been fatal or highly dangerous if not aborted.

The important question that the report does not address is simple :-
We know that any delay in deciding to abort is dangerous.
Is it safer to make a snap decision to abort or to go, given the strong possibility that in almost a third of cases the aircraft may be unflyable.

How many fatalities have resulted from avoidable 'go' decisions compared to those from abort overruns and how many of the overrun fatalities are attributable to slow decisions and action.
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