Thing is: There is no aural warning: 'Hello, my name is nosewheel and I just blew'. There might not even be a 'bang'. All you have is a massive, sudden vibration of uncertain origin. Nothing wrong with that crew's reflexes.

Taking flaphandlemover's advice - let the following speak.

SKYbrary - Rejected Take Off

http://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviat...off_safety.pdf

Quote IXNAT
"But we all learn from a healthy discussion and analysis. No one on this blog has said, these guys had their heads up their third brown eye or what they did was not smart. It appears that guys want a healthy discussion so when they are faced with a similar decision they might have more information to make in their case a good decision."

Some old timers might remember an EK A300-600R had a nose tyre failure at V1 one night at MTOW (about 15+ years ago). Tread seperated and hit under the E&E compartment so hard all three IRS's failed :eek:. All screens blank after the bang so take off and return continued on standby instruments :ok:

to the crew involved , sandpit is right I recall the event too. if you need a defensive argument when you are facing the "panel" , it might be worth adding this to your arnsenel. good luck guys.

Dont think there will be an inquiry. Crew is flying again.

just my 2 rusty cents here...so you're barrelling down the runway, you're a few knots before V1, you hear a bang, the aircraft pulls to one side. Maybe you have time to look at N1, maybe you're too busy trying to keep it on centerline.

appears a lot like the V1 cut we do every PPC to me, except it happened a second before V1. They did just what most (if not all) of us would do in that situation.

but that's just me.

Maybe that crew made the best decision, maybe they made the second best decision but the fact remains that they stopped the aircraft and no one was hurt. Congrats to them.