This was LOKE's thread, and I'm not trying to hijack it, nor trying to have the last word. I did, however, have a fair bit to say, and feel a professional responsibility to address a few remaining contentious points. There are literally thousands of pilots 'out there', who, due to no fault of their own, have little or minimal knowledge of safe flight following OEI at the Takeoff phase. Company culture is usually the culprit, much emphasis is placed upon engine failure manipulative skills, but all too often, little placed on obstacle management (and therefore survival) for continued flight. I was fortunate, I was raised in an airline where performance knowledge was not just well disciplined, but a religion.
We have people like Mutt, whom I percieve to be striving for the best possible levels of safety consistant with economic viability. But yet, to Mutt, for whom I have the highest respect, I say that the perfect world is possible, and does exist with some operators.
I work for a major airline as a Pilot / Performance Engineer, and have several performance sub-contracts with other operators. I RIGIDLY insist with all of my 'clients' (including my primary employer), that I have sole control over Operations Manual content in all matters related to Training for OEI procedures, Actual procedures for OEI, development of Specific Runway OEI Procedures, and RTOWs. It is not enough for the P/E department to hand the Airport Analyses to Flight Operations and leave it to them to use at their own discretion.
Several comments throughout this thread still disturb me, the worst being.....If no OEI procedure is laid down, then follow the SID..... One Major Major Airline who uses a contractor to provide airport analysis, only supplies crews with OEI procedures if a deviation from 'Straight Ahead Runway Track' for the next 25 miles is required. The 'Straight Ahead' runways therefore have no laid down OEI procedure, where, in many cases a simple 1.6% climb gradient (for a 2 engined aircraft) is available to a standard company acceleration altitude. No OEI has been laid down, so..... the proponent of no OEI so follow the SID takes up the SID where 3.3% is the minimum requirement, and heaven only knows what the required acceleration altitude would be. If you're going to do this, at least get out the AFM, and calculate for a 4.1% gradient (3.3%+0.8%) all of the way up to MSA. Of course, 3.3% is the minimum, it may be more, I've seen up to 5.2%. And again, if you're going to do this where the MSA is particularly high, what are you going to do about the 5/10 minute limit on Takeoff thrust?
Another concern that lingers is that pilots DO NOT HAVE the full range of obstacle data at their disposal to evaluate the most critical obstacles, this is simply not available in the 'public' Aeronautical forum, with limited exception in Australia via the published STOD/OCG system (and then only for 15000 M straight ahead). The Terminal Area Charts and Instrument Approach Charts show a good range of the major 'big' obstacles. In 36 years of doing SERIOUS Performance Engineering work and more runway analyses than I can remember, I can recall only 2 of the TAC/IAL obstacles as being the critical obstacles. The smaller less obvious ones will get you.
If this post sounds like self aggrandisement, then I apologise, it's not so. If 99.99% of the readers think of this as my ego trip, then so be it, but if it saves 1 life, then it has been worthwhile.
In my final words I refer to John Tullamarine's post immediately preceding this one. John is one more professional along with Mutt for whom I've developed the greatest respect. John T refers to the legal repercussions following 'straying' from the ideal, I tend to think more of blood, viscera, and human body parts strewn over the point of impact, and THAT's the bottom line.
Old Smokey