NW1, thanks for your reply! Just wan't to be clear that I do believe the crew had nothing else different to do.
fireflybob, I'm not sure if I correctly understood your explanation, but I think you're not 100% correct. You cannot choose min or max V1 at your discretion. Let's check your 2 examples:
1 - considering 34 at the end of TODA, you will be out of regulations.
2 - choosing a max V1 you could depart, but what if you had a failure before this speed? Until which velocity you could stop in the remaining lenght? You would need a "check point".
I agree that V1 computation, as you said, works quite well. But for (as I posted) "conventional" aircraft, not for the Concorde.
Hotel Charlie, my question has too much to do with the first thing you said:
Having a failure after V1 only means GO UNLESS you have an unflyable condition
Let me try to explain in other words (please note that as I'm not a Concorde pilot - unfortunately -, I'm just supposing!):
Let's assume I found that for a given condition my VR is 198Kt. I checked my performance manual and found that 150Kt is the minimum airspeed from which I could experience an eng failure and still reach 35ft at the end of the TODA.
Using the same conditions, I found from the charts that 190Kt is the maximum airspeed from which I could initiate a RTO and stop my acft in the TORA.
Now, what happens if I had an eng failure at 170Kt? I would have two options:
1 - If I decided to continue, I would overfly the end of TODA more than 35ft;
2 - If I decided to reject, I would be able to stop before the end of the TORA.
Now, note that, in both options, I would be respecting all the regulations!!!
That's why I still didn't understand why in such acft we couldn't have two checking speeds!