Gentlemen,
I think the EK SOP's regarding loadsheet and T/O data entry are foolproof. If guys mess up they clearly didn't follow the SOP's for whatever reason.
I am not saying that I never made a wrong entry, and quite often I find an error in the TO data, BUT, I trap these errors because of the SOP's!
The only thing that might to be changed is the order. I's prefer us to get the loadsheet, check the numbers and only then do the T/O figures.
In the loadsheet procedure, we check DOW, ZFW, TOW, ZFWCG and ECAM CG together. After that the F/O checks the ZFW again by himself.
For the LPC: the F/O prepares the data and writes them down, the Capt checks them and inuts them, then crosschecks with the numbers the F/O wrote down.
The weight should have been checked by both, and to finalize it, we do a GREEN DOT check.
Don't get me wrong, I'm open for improvements, but we check, crosscheck and have a final 'redundancy' in the green dot check.. how far do you want to go?
If something needs to be improved, it is the disturbances during the preparations which gets us out of sequence or skip things... If operations could be a little bit more streamlined, the fuel and tech log should be finished at least 20 minutes before departure. (considering we should get the ZFW around 40 minutes before STD). By then the loadsheet should arrive and the crew should have the following 10 minutes without anyone coming in the flight deck to brief and do the loadsheet/LPC check.
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The A345 is a 2 man operation, and I would advise everyone to keep it that way. Recently a B747 cargo operator had almost an identical mishap, scraped the tail, but because it was a cargo, not too much fuss about it in the newspapers. In the following investigation, it came to light that the augmenting guys had 'helped out' with the T/O numbers and got it wrong. They left with speeds for 100 tons less then their actual weight..
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Even to consider to abort a T/O around 100 kts because the acceleration 'doesn't feel right' or the trend vector is not showing what I expect should be punished by the electrical chair in modern airline operations. (slight exaguration
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Let me explain myself a little bit:
First of all: a jet engine does not produce the same thrust at different speeds with the same thrust settings, basic thermodynamics. Your acceleration (even in a perfect world) will initially increase, then decrease again. So you can not put a certain number on the acceleration itself.
Second: The trend vector is coupled to the AIRSPEED!! So there you are on a rather short runway, hitting a negative windshear. Your trend vector will be less then expected and according to quite a lot of guys above, a reason to stop the take off. Your groundspeed on the other hand might be a lot higher then you think and you would set yourself up for an overrun... The only good action would be to slam the TOGA and fly the windshear maneuver.
Acceleration monitoring can only be done with special equipment for that purpose only. Should be coupled to RAAS so the equipment knows what the runway is like. But again, it is dependent on weight, so as someone posted before, if the crew puts in the wrong weight, all the systems will fail to pick up the error.
The only thing that would make sense is the aircraft weighs itself. It can't be that difficult to put some kind of weight measurement in the struts of the mains. With the cg known to the aircraft, a gross error check can be made by the aircraft, e.g. only accepting TO weight that are within a preset margin of the actual measured weight. It doesn't need to be spot on, so no need for expensive very accurate 'scales'. As long as it picks up a significant error... But that's one for the manufacturers, not the operators...