Originally Posted by
RAT 5
IMHO there really needs to be less trained monkey and more education. Trained monkey is great on a dark nasty night in a worse case scenario. Training kicks in. Excellent. But there are times when it is not appropriate and yet some are being trained there is no discretion. Hm?
Completely agree with you. I was unlucky and had 4 RTO’s in the space of two weeks just after getting my command. Apart from one, all were serious issues that would effect flight safety. However none of them would require an evacuation or attendance of emergency services.
They were all on >3000 metres runways and I just closed the thrustlevers, disconnected the autobrake and let the aircraft roll to a convenient exit. (Which was in the last third of the runway). We vacated the runway and I had a quick word with the cabin crew and passengers.
Nothing was ever heard from the company regarding my modified procedure. However quite a few colleagues told me that I should have carried out the standard SOP without thinking about it. I don’t understand the logic behind this. Yes, if you have a serious issue or you are not sure what is going on then of course, bring it to a halt asap and investigate. In our case it was obvious what the problems were and no further troubleshooting was required.
In my opinion this is were training sometimes misses its mark. We are so used to practicing high speed RTO’s or very slow speed RTO’s. Normally with an engine failure but hardly ever with an issue which manifests itself at about 80-100 kts. Even then most people will carry out the standard RTO SOP in the sim as they can’t fail you for being extra ‘safe’.
At my new company we just got an email saying that we have no discretion and every RTO must be carried out in accordance with SOP. No discretion allowed and an RTO from 20 kts needs to be treated the same as an RTO from 140 kts. Complete madness but it is their train set.