What would be interesting to know is how that
actual stopping distance in this very high speed RTO compared with the numbers in the book. i.e. given the actual field conditions, dry runway, good braking action, wind direction, ac loading etc. The calculated accelerate-stop distance for an RTO at V1 was probably a ground roll of less than 2,000m. (An educated guess on my part.)
If this is the case then the crew might then have felt that an aborted take-off even 5 knots over V1 could still be achieved safely even if the figures were not "in the book".
This incident shows that there was still plenty of runway left (500m) when the ac stopped and so it was not even close to being an over-run. All this means that the crew probably knew that there was a safe margin and so had the confidence to do what they did knowing that, whilst not being the normal course of action, it was also not a totally reckless decision either. 20:20 hindsight is great of course but sometimes the rules can be "bent" though had this been a different field, different ac, different weather then it might have been a different story.
The moral? Don't even think about an abort above V1 if operating close to the limits (eg Gibraltar
) but don't rule it out in more "favorable" situations...
MB