vilas
I would agree with all of that, except for the first part of the first sentence. Boeing are quite clear in the QRH, that:
Above 80 knots and before V1, reject the takeoff for any of the following:
- engine failure - confirmed by two parameters
- take-off configuration warning
- predictive windshear warning
- if the airplane is unsafe or unable to fly.
That’s a cut and paste from the 737-800 QRH at the airline I currently fly from. The decision to stop was for a correct reason, if it was taken before V1, but the problem was in the execution, and that shouldn’t have been an issue because there are four simple steps in the initial RTO which any B737 captain should have engraved in their muscle memory, should review in the before take-off emergency brief, and be mentally rehearsing throughout the take-off role.
However, looking at the report, it would seem that despite what was written in the tech log the decision to reject was almost certainly taken above V1, and the process was slowed down further by attempting to fault find. Those were both errors which shouldn’t have happened, but in defence of the crew involved I wonder how much is due to the way simulator training is conducted. I’ve been flying the 737 for fifteen years, so nowhere near as long as some of the posters here. I’ve flown it for five airlines, so I’ve done about 26 recurrent checks and five OCC’s, three of which were excellent and covered virtually the whole type rating course, one of which included the type rating so was even better (that was the first one, obviously), and one of which was two sim sessions then a proficiency check, so wasn’t quite as good. But in every OCC except the initial type rating, and in every training or checking event, at five different airlines, every RTO has been for a fire or engine failure, and every RTO has been conducted with either 125 or 75 metres visibility, and every RTO has been initiated by a failure or fire two or three knots below V1 and every EFATO has been initiated 2 or 3 knots above V1 because the instructor or examiner has set that on the touch screen on their IOS because they either want you to stop or they want you to go, and don’t want some grey area right in the middle, exactly at V1 where in a non EFIS aircraft the width of the ASI needle can lead to discussion.
Not once, in any of those events, has the RTO been performed when taking off from a wet runway, in the dark, knowing that if we get airborne then at four hundred feet the LNAV is going to command an immediate right turn and we are then going to climb on a 4 DME arc around the Kathmandu VOR with the flaps out until we get to about three thousand feet above the airfield, which is going to take forever if we lose an engine, and we are going to climb to about twelve thousand feet to get across the foothills of the Himalayas to our take off alternate which is a dreadful sh*thole in India, and knowing that if we had a major control malfunction or a fire that wouldn’t go out then if we can’t get to that sh*thole our only option is, if we’re lucky and have the approval is to fly fourteen miles from Kathmandu and then return flying a curving RNP/AR approach through a narrow valley, or even worse, without the approval, fly a steep VOR approach where once you get to 4 DME and you’re visual, in the dark, in your burning or barely controllable aeroplane you are going to increase the rate of descent to get down onto the three degree PAPI slope for the visual landing, and if in the stress of all that, which you have never practised even in your Cat C training you get it wrong and have to go around then you are going around towards high ground where the MSA reaches 28,000 feet within 25 miles of the airfield.
Having been to Kathmandu many times, despite knowing that we stop below V1 and at or above V1 we go, I’m not sure, what I would have done, without the value of hindsight and a thread on prune to learn from, If I’d been in the left hand seat of that aircraft and had got a configuration warning at or slightly above V1, except I hope I wouldn’t have tried to find out if it was real, in the same way as we don’t try to find out if a fire warning is real, or a wind shear warning is real, we just assume it is and react. I’m probably going to get flamed for this by the pundits, but after thirty five years of flying for a living I’ve learned that it’s easy to sit in the back of a simulator or in an armchair and pontificate, but we weren’t there, and we shouldn’t vilify someone for a mistake which at some point in our careers, before we knew everything from reading prune, we could have made ourselves.