interview question ...Would you ever break an SOP?

[Professor Rubik]

MD82 & SOP's

Interesting question Pablo made all the more real as you point out by yesterdays headline news. Indeed the incident was an absolute tragedy and I’m sure everybody’s thoughts are with those involved and their families.

Aviation learns and evolves partly through accidents. SOP’s sometimes get changed as a result of the outcome of the type of investigation that will no doubt now follow. I guess here and now so soon afterwards, isn’t really the place to do it and it’s not really for us to speculate on what happened either without proper facts etc.

All I wanted to say in reply to the point made is that there are many SOP’s but perhaps none more so ‘cast in stone’ as Take Off Safety Speeds and the strict actions that go with them. This is of course mostly because of the weights, inertia and the lack of decision making time available in the event of a situation occurring at or around V1. As such, it is critical that there are no interpretations of the rules and hence why this particular drill tends to be the one practiced over and over in the simulators.

The procedure that dictates that at or above V1 the a/c is committed to take off derives from being the best fit scenario for the majority of incidents, whereby taking the problem airborne produces a lower risk factor compared with running off the end of the runway, which is incidentally one of those things that sounds so very benign but will most probably result in a major incident in itself.
However, as highlighted by Redsnail absolute commitment to go after V1 will never suit every eventuality as the control jam situation proves. Ideally events at or around V1 would never occur, or if they did we would have sufficient time to evaluate each situation individually. Given though that this is not the case and there is not time to begin a process of logical thinking during such an event, I would retain comfort in the knowledge that the well rehearsed drills of go/no go at V1 should be maintained.

Lastly, we must never underestimate the benefit of hindsight. Had the MD82 crew aborted the take off after V1 the incident that followed would have been deemed equally as bad, even if perhaps it had have resulted in fewer casualties. However, the outcome would always be that SOP’s were breached and had the problem been taken airborne the incident may have been avoided. Sadly we now have the benefit of knowing the outcome of that decision on this occasion. We will have to wait and find out exactly what went wrong, but I personally have no doubt that their decision to go was the correct one, albeit a very unfortunate outcome.

Best wishes