the captain used his common sense and his Mk1 eyeball to deduce the safest solution to a potentally fatal situation.
Did he? Or was he just lucky that there actually was enough runway ahead.
Tell me Ancient Geek, what were his probabilities of crashing had he continued the flight?
If they were high then he did the right thing.
If low then he should have continued the take off.
If we don't know then you can't argue that he did the right thing as much as I can't argue that he didn't.
There is NO STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE for what happened in this case.
The lack of SOP for this particular failure doesn't justify a breach of other SOPs.
There are many situations that we deal with that are not covered directly by SOP but abandoning a take off after V1 let alone Vr is a major deviation.
I just hope that you are not so bull-headed when something similar happens to you.
If you read my posts I don't discount deviation from SOPs if the circumstances warrant it BUT and it's a big but they really do have to warrant it.
It seems to me that too many Captains use the standard disclaimer in the manuals about his right to deviate from SOP and the Rules of the Air too lightly because they arrogantly think that they know better, when in most circumstances, they don't.
Just because this incident thankfully ended safely does not mean that the Captain can be vindicated for what is a very risky course of action.