NW1
Thanks for that. I reckon most pilots try quite hard to keep straight so I am puzzled by how early the aircraft started to leave the centreline. If we accept he would have liked to have got back parallel (no need to get back to centre unless you are on a check ride etc) then it is interesting to think about what might have made him give up on that - by give up I mean use less than full control.
At the start of any take off run there is no handling involved other than keeping straight. Your type specific comments re steering are interesting and could be a reason for an initial reaction being on the tentative side. But talking generally, I feel that if you try and keep straight but find the aircraft response is not what you are used to (for whatever reason) then that is quite a distraction in itself while you mentally ask yourself ‘What is going on here?’ In my experience pilots don’t talk (intercom or R/T) about an unexpected handling problem until they have given up on trying to sort it out just because trying to deal with it uses up spare personal capacity in huge chunks.
I don’t know if any handling tests were carried out at Istres post accident re the effect of the missing spacer, but unless they were, one would have a nagging feeling that the effect could have been underestimated in the BEA report.
Having witnessed several crashes (too many actually but that is beside the point) I have more than once been left with a lasting feeling that the accident started with a trigger ‘event X’. After X there may have been (and usually were) several other things that also had to happen before the accident became inevitable, but with hindsight X was trigger. For me event X in this accident was not keeping straight before other things went wrong.
JF