Originally Posted by
archae86
My mistake, I guess. I'm not a pilot, and was speaking English, not realizing I had inadvertently employed a reserved term with a formal meaning. I just meant "terminated the takeoff while going pretty darn fast". As distinct from crashing minutes after takeoff, as some early reports had it.
Not a mistake at all Archae, there are multiple definitions for V speeds but in general, V1 = The speed beyond which the takeoff should no longer be aborted. It's a reasonable assumption that shortly after V1, either aviation is being committed, or you're coming to a halt within the runway length. There are of course all sorts of traps and gotcha's to complicate that assumption, but the very reason for defining V1 in jet aircraft is to avoid high speed landscaping or low speed, single engine, terminal aerobatics. Like all accidents, in this case there will be a series of events that allowed a foolproof preventative measure being anything but foolproof, but in this case it looks like most people survived; which can only be good news.