Folks,
Many moons ago now, I was sitting at the holding point of 15 in Cairns (when it was a lot shorter than now) and a TAA DC-9 went off ahead of us.
Somewhere past V-1, his thrust was reduced by 50%, and as per SOPs, he started to turn for the all engine/engine out profile ---- for only a few second, then the wings leveled --- now headed for the hills around Awaba mission.
Then a second go at a turn, same result ---- then decided to head straight down the valley past Gordonvale visual ---- where the overcast was about 1500 with scattered heavy showers.
As there were no headlines next morning, the "change of plan" to a visual departure OCTA obviously worked, but I was glad it wasn't me.
An aeroplane with seriously "modest" performance was the 747-100/200 with Pratt -7A engines --- 2000' at 20 miles from Bahrain down the Persian/Arabian ( name of choice or prejudice) Gulf ---- and that was on 4.
After a bird strike off RW 16 in Sydney, one of the QF as above flew visual through the Botany Bay Heads, the SID over the sandhills was out of the question. The comments of the Captain immediately after ( an old Sunderland/Sandringham pilot) was quite "instructive".