now you see thats all very interesting info.
APANDY, I think your lot have got it spot on. Get rid of the drag as early as possible - ie, flap up as soon as you're V2+whatever the minimim is, and the no turns before 400' is straight out of document 8168 so that makes sense too.
But why anyone would link a flap retraction to a height is beyond me. I've heard countless arguments and I don't understand any of them! There are no circumstances that I'm aware of where the height makes any difference. A change in flap selection can only be made because of speed - it says so in every aircraft manual written, and it never even mentions height!
Where I think the confusion lies is that there are various certification platforms for an acceleration altitude (ICAO, for instance, use between 400' and 1500') for the acceleration platform in the event of an engine failure but this still is not the criteria for flap retraction - its only about speed!
The arguments about reaching for a lever in the dark on a windy night when you are a bit knackered and finding the wrong one are a bit bizarre to me. Its certainly not a reason to be climbing against the significantly increased drag of having the flaps down! Noise abatement is an interesting one - very few business jet operators I know fly proper noise abatement departures because of the problem of limiting body angle (actually I don't think this is the real reason they don't do it - I think the real reason is they can't be bothered to train properly for it and believe their aircraft are quiet enough thanks very much and they are probably right). But even that doesn't justify leaving the flaps down and increasing the speed against that drag.
What I'm really interested in is where on earth the idea came from that flap retraction is linked to height. In lots of companies its the first call that isnt speed related and I have seen loads of COR's and MOR's related to forgetting to retract the flaps because the 400' call was missed. Big problem here, height is the wrong call to trigger retracting flaps - should be the V2+ call, and its PM moving the eyes to a different instrument at a critical moment that may be at the heart of this. What also bothers me is that some people think that an engine failure means you do something different with the flaps than what you do if the aircraft is operating with all engines (which is at the heart of companies choosing an arbitrary height for both). You DO do the same thing in the event of an engine failure - retract the flaps on the correct speed schedule...
what do you think..?