"Upon reaching V1, the pilots of EK407 would have been expecting everything to continue as normal. At VR (I assume they got to that too) they would have pulled back and expected to lift off as it has always done. When lift-off did not occur, the PIC and EFFO would have faced a very unusual situation as to "what to do now"? Correctly, and this should be applauded, they decided to continue and apply TOGA thrust (apparently, from other posts) and avoided a disaster that could have cost many lives and the future of EK as an airline."
+G, although I would not normally recommend anyone in a heavy "Heavy" to abort after V1 I belive that in this case they were closer to a disaster because they DIDN'T abort. In reality they were way below the "true" V1 and thus they had plenty of runway to stop at.
SAS had a 767 in CPH once were ZFW was entered instead of TOW. When they reached "VR" (which was actually some 30 knots below the real VR) and the aircraft refused to lift off the captain aborted.
They stopped well before the runway end and we don't know if he would have been able to get airborne had he continued.
This is not said to discredit the EK crew's action. They acted correctly and in accordance with general knowledge and training. I just wanted to point out that in real life decisions are not always black and white.
Disclaimer: above reasoning is based on the assumption that wrong weight was entered in the FMC. I don't know if that's the case. The investigation will tell.
Last edited by expat400; 5th Apr 2009 at 04:09.