Mad Flt Scientist
Yep, you came through again!!!! Thanks. You're usually very good for posting the details.
It was in the early nineties, as I recall, a major carrier in the U.S. had an RTO accident...short/wet runway, non-standard grooving, a lot of rubber at the end...anyway, while they hung the captain, a lot of procedures changed. One new procedure that was implemented was that of a reduced V1 when on wet runways. Of course, another change in the SOPs was that of calling V1 five knots early...stressing the importance of (in the case of rejecting the takeoff) beginning the RTO procedure no later than V1 (in essence, not allowing the aircraft to accelerate above V1).
I remember the political nonsense (feel free to substitute another eight-letter word), as I was at the seminar held by Boeing that addressed this particular accident.
At the end of the seminar, there was a Q & A session...a couple of Boeing test pilots and engineers were running this thing...and, I had a bunch of questions...several questions they didn't like hearing, much less answering. My relationship with my company (my job) and with Boeing were never the same after that. In fact, my boss explicitly told me in front of everyone to sit down and shut up.
But, while the captain of the aircraft involved in the accident certainly had some blame coming to him, he was the victim of a stacked deck of cards against him. I had to make that point to Boeing. (Of course, they already knew this...I just wanted them to know that we all knew it, too!)
The accident was a fatal one...the captain has to live with this for the rest of his life. But, as a result, several SOPs have changed; runways are now getting standard grooving; runways are being steam cleaned more often. And, hopefully, things like this will not happen again.
Thank you, again, for this post and all your other posts which are quite informative.
Fly safe,
PantLoad