RTO with right seat PF
As long as everyone knows in advance what their roles and possible actions are, which can be confirmed in briefings, the problem is not as big as it might seem.
At V1 minus 10 knots the master caution and wing body overheat light came on. Despite his word perfect briefing to the first officer the captain rejected the take off but failed to manually apply speed brake lever up in the process.
The 737 stopped a few feet from the end of the runway which had no stopway and a cliff dropping into the ocean less than 50 feet away.
Understandably the F/O had a fluttering heart as this had caught him completely unawares but when he calmed down he asked the captain why he had changed his mind re stopping or going above 80 knots. The captain was unable to give a concise reason except to say it was an instinctive reaction caused by the sudden appearance of the Master Caution light.
The captain was a highly experienced 15,000 hour pilot most of which was on the 737. So it is probably not a wise statement to say all our first officers, no matter how experienced or inexperienced they are, are to be completely trusted with their decision to reject a take off on their sector simply because they are well trained and therefore are not subject to error in a reject decision
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: another place
Posts: 736
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
My company has the capt hand on the levers after thrust set, and it is his decision to abort. Like driving a car where one of you has a foot on the throttle and the other the brakes that he can't use while steering. 
I think this is a poor method as it will increase to time to brake application in the event of engine failure ie stating the fact that the engine has failed for him to then say "stop stop my controls" and apply the brakes. The FO should have his hands on and only abort after 80kts for the usual suspects ie fire failure control restriction or runway incursion etc.
The main point is training. We carry out a series of takes on a daily basis that we are trained to do. If we cannot carry the task to a standard, that is an issue for the training dept. Additional responsibility could be allocated with upgrade to SFO status to protect against the inexperienced. Otherwise maybe we should only let capts fly together lol.
We recently started training FO rejects at 80kts for capt incapacitation, I assume because the CAA said we should.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
D and F
I think this is a poor method as it will increase to time to brake application in the event of engine failure ie stating the fact that the engine has failed for him to then say "stop stop my controls" and apply the brakes. The FO should have his hands on and only abort after 80kts for the usual suspects ie fire failure control restriction or runway incursion etc.
The main point is training. We carry out a series of takes on a daily basis that we are trained to do. If we cannot carry the task to a standard, that is an issue for the training dept. Additional responsibility could be allocated with upgrade to SFO status to protect against the inexperienced. Otherwise maybe we should only let capts fly together lol.
We recently started training FO rejects at 80kts for capt incapacitation, I assume because the CAA said we should.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
D and F
The captain was a highly experienced 15,000 hour pilot most of which was on the 737. So it is probably not a wise statement to say all our first officers, no matter how experienced or inexperienced they are, are to be completely trusted with their decision to reject a take off on their sector simply because they are well trained and therefore are not subject to error in a reject decision
We are human and suffer from all the fallibilities that implies - experience and training notwithstanding. As you increase the number of actions required by an individual in a time-critical scenario, the likelihood of errors or omissions increases - this is why Boeing are steadily removing 'recall' items from their checklists. If you take a two-pilot aeroplane and leave one of the pilots out of the decision making and action taking process, logically you'd expect a greater number of mistakes than if those duties had been shared in the first place?
As far as RTO practice goes, in my company we try to form 'natural' crews for training & checking, with both captain and FO acting as HP and NHP during the course of a detail. There's no extra 'captains only' secret Masonic sim-session to pass on hidden knowledge, so the training is near-enough identical: if you don't get it right, you practice until you do, whichever seat you occupy on the line. This means that everyone who passes their recurrent detail is regarded as at least fully competent in this area, so can be "trusted" to perform their duties as per SOP.
Yes, we are all subject to error when it comes to a go/no go decision and the actions taken after that event. Do these errors have a statistically significant bias towards one side of the cockpit or the other? I don't know myself but I'm pretty sure my employer would have changed our SOPs if trend monitoring had shown this to be the case. Anyway, we're talking about a fairly rare event being compounded by another event (non-compliance with SOP), so the overall statistical risk level probably comes out quite low.
