Stuka Child.
I hope you continue to participate - your knowledge, experience and opinions are valuable and worth sharing.
Beamr posted a link to an interesting (and I hope, informative) study:
NLR Air Transport Safety Institute: REJECTING A TAKEOFF AFTER V1...WHY DOES IT (STILL)HAPPEN?
The inclusion criteria for data analysis were:
The following criteria were used to establish the data sample:
•Only occurrences that were classified as ‘accidents’ or ‘serious incidents’ according to ICAO Annex 13 definition were included;
•Both fatal and non-fatal accidents were included;
•The accidents and serious incidents involved a high speed rejected takeoff in which the abort was started after V1 (the actual decision to abort could be before V1);
•Accidents related to unlawful or military action were excluded;
•The occurrences involved fixed wing aircraft with a maximum takeoff mass of 5,500kg or higher that were used in a commercial operation (passenger or cargo) including training and ferry flights. There was no restriction to the geographical location of the occurrence;
•Both turbofan and turboprop aircraft were considered. Piston engined aircraft were excluded; •The accidents occurred during 1980 through 2008.
As far as I am concerned, the inclusion of fatal accident data means that the data are generated from peoples' deaths. Hard won statistics.
Note that I am not saying one should never abort after V1. Obviously, things are far more nuanced than that, and as the report linked to by Beamr says:
•Pilots have difficulties in recognising “unsafe to fly” conditions;
•The Detection-Decision-Action process still takes a lot of time!
Despite these difficulties, in the period 1994-2008, for the incidents analysed, 31.9% of the decisions to abort were
correct (44.4% were not, with the remainder unknown)
I have neither the experience or knowledge to evaluate what happened in Kathmandu, and the multiple opinions in this thread show that it is not cut-and-dried. What we know from statistics is that many RTOs are unjustified. Some, however, are not, and we are arguing/debating/discussing how to tell the difference. It isn't always easy.
I'll thank you again for your engagement. I think we are on the same side, but maybe on different wings (football, not aircraft).