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Old 1st Mar 2014, 12:33
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Centaurus
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Australia
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Air Nauru had a take off problem at night on Nauru in the 1980's. Both PT2 inlet probes were blocked by a combination of insects and phosphate dust. This resulted in erroneous over-reading of the take off EPR gauge needles.
While this problem had occurred on previous occasions to one engine and was easily spotted from EPR readings, the incident described occurred to both engines simultaneously.

When toward the end of the take off roll it became obvious the 737-200 was not going to get airborne before the end of the runway, and the erroneous EPR was not suspected during the take off roll, the captain immediately fire-walled both thrust levers and was able to get airborne at VR minus 15 knots. With the end of the runway only 15 metres from a cliff, rubble from phosphate rock deposits on the cliff top, was blown back over the runway.

It was a close shave and a black hole climb-out and the captain did a good job of firewalling the engines with no harm to the engines, as it turned out.
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