Even if you want to go into this case, you don't know the reason why they used that runway, or what they saw and experienced, when they realised something was wrong.
737, between 80 and V1, you only stop for any fire or smoke, engine failure, predictive windshear or aircraft unable to fly. Here you have to consider the last item, this would depend on your speed primarily as stated before. Low speed it's better to stop, high speed you better continue. If I were to be at 85%, not knowing if I'm going to make it but in the high speed region, I would still continue (firewall the engines if necessary). Because this would be an indication my performance calculations were wrong, making my V1 doubtfull as well. If I'm high speed, I should be pretty close to the flying envelope. And probably far away from the required stopping distance as well. If I would be around 80-100kts, yes I would stop. Both cases will take some sweat though... but I don't see why you should doubt current airline procedures.
There are plenty of other situations where you need to decide quickly and most airlines train the pilots to slowly become go-minded above 80kts, and the higher the speed, the more go-minded you should be. All because the airplane will fly even at speeds slightly lower than Vr/V2, and is hard to stop. This training does not rule out the stop option at low speeds. A nice example is the pilot incapacitation check at 80kts (to stay on-topic).
In the past there were a lot more RTO's that went wrong, than cases like the one you mentioned. Don't make the past come back please.
Last edited by BraceBrace; 17th May 2008 at 07:29.