I appreciate that there are a lot of you in aviation and interested in aviation who when down the back are blind, insensitive or just not very interested in where you are headed other than what it says on your ticket. That's just unluck on your part
. I obviously think I have abilities that some of you are loathe to credit
.
Anyway, this was no ATC instruction, and as such it can only have been some time-saving measure, and frankly guys and girls you are welcome to your own views of how it might have been rationalised.
At the end of the day, pilots are tired and want to get home, and I suppose if a slot expiry was imminent then there's the main reason.
It was actually still quite warm, probably 20 degrees, and there was no wind to speak of, but this runway is not elevated.
The runway direction for departure is rarely an issue unless there is a 5+ easterly component. So the airport layout gives the pilot just three potential taxying options:
(a) to the end of the runway via the parallel inactive (main taxiway a la Gatwick)
(b) to the end of the runway via backtrack from the entry point he actually used
(c) what he did.
For those who've added it up, this is indeed an 8000+ feet runway, like Gatwick, but with fewer entry points (just two at each end).
I just don't think that leaving a quarter of the runway behind you when you are not light is good practice. Last time I flew this route I wouldn't have been surprised. There were only about 30 pax, the take of roll lasted only 20 seconds and we launched up to FL400 pretty damn quick. We used the same runway but as we were on time, we went from the end. This time it was 170+ pax.
If a problem had occurred just before V1 then perhaps less than 40% of the runway would have remained available to stop.
Now, I know that even more heavily laden, the same aicraft might well regularly operate from runways 2000 feet shorter and where the temperature and elevation might be higher, but is it right to deliberately shorten your own runway to save time?
Why did I have the answer to this question once drummed in as a straight "No", and others have it marked as "It depends whether commercially you need to save 5 minutes" etched into their psyche? Or indeed 5 seconds in
Spitoon's world?
