Tom,
I think that through our combined sheer disbelief, FSI indoctrination or desire to retire with licenses still intact, a majority here might well be against the motion.
There seems to be 2 distinct issues at play here:
1) Operators flying all-engines operating with a fixed pitch and getting alarmingly close to VFE before retracting flaps on a normal departure.
2) The aerodynamic efficacy of the aircraft operating at V2-V2+10 with TO flaps vs V2+whatever clean
Now, issue 1 - can deffo see where you are coming from. Have flown everything from B737, CL30, EMB Legacy and CL850, and in all of these airframes, "Gear UP - Level Change" has produced acceptable attitudes, V2+15-20-ish and acceptable ROCs. Fixed pitch is bad for noise, fuel, path and turn radius - so am fully with you on the idea that on a normal TO, flying V2+80 and flaps TO is a kaka idea.
Issue 2 - still not buying it. From an aerodynamic POV you might very well be right, but with no way of making the manufacturer accept your evidence. They all have 2 ways of climbing OEI:
1) V2 and Flaps TO (or back to V2+10 if failure occurred after this speed)
2) Vfto and Flaps 0
Now, apart from waving Ockhams Razor at you - suggesting that the simplest explaination for OEMs chosing Vfto as your clean climb-speed because this
is the most effective gradient speed, thus having the best performing and thus best selling aircraft they can - I simply must disagree with the idea of flying the aircraft in a radically different configuration than the OEM tells you to, especially just after losing one engine. This apart from the arguments stated in my previous post...
If the G650 AFM says gear+flaps up at the same time, then so be it, and that aircraft then needs to be flown accordingly. However, if it is just the 650
checklist that states this, then this is merely the sequence you check things in, not necessarily indicating a temporal relationship between when you legally can retract the gear, respectively the flaps. On the 850 checklist, "Gear and Flaps" is one check-item but by no means one do-item ;-)
It may be more efficient going clean @ V2+whatever - but why would I do it? I check for each and every departure that I can clear all obstacles using the AFM speeds and configuration, so I would gain nothing by going down the path you suggest. I cannot lift more mass out of a given runway, but by using non-standard procedures I leave myself wide open to attack from lawyers, to career-ending rumours about my person and ridicule from my peers.
In other words - you may have an aerodynamically point, but from an operational point it's a non-starter.
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