Reminds me of the Caledonian Tristars that used to go to Cyprus. I spoke to one of the Captains later, after he had gone over to A320s, he said their standard ops was to point it down the runway and close their eyes!
I once paxed on one of those Cally L1011 LTN-LCA flights, on a warm Summers evening in the early '90's. Over 400 POB as I remember. Brakes a bit wiffy during turnaround and we did use all of the runway
on departure. I can only imagine what it must have looked like from the Flight Deck.