Divergent point.
 

According JAR-OPS 1495, all operators shall establish contingency procedures for the event of an engine failure on TO when unable to clear obstacles vertically following the SID.

I´m not very sure what to do if the engine quits when, following the SID, we have already passed the divergent point that lead us for the alternate path to clear obstacles laterally.

Do we continue with the standard departure? Do we expedite our turn to the alternate path? Any difference if we are below or above level off altitud?

My company FOM doesnot state anything regarding this scenario. What about yours? Regards

There are some airfield where joining an emergency turn after the specified point could put you into a hill side so that may not be a good idea, However following the SID may have a climb gradient that you can not make.

I always look at the emergency turn and the local approach plate (ILS,ect) for the runway in use these together with the area chart allow me to be sure of my flight path in the event of a failure.

For me the it is very important that both crew know exactly where they will fly in the event of a failure, therefore I always put the route into route 2 and breif it to the PNF.

Am I making sense ?

alatriste, that's a good question, but one of those classic impossible ones!
The truth? nobody knows!
That's where science-only pilots fall like turkeys.
The book says your engine will fail at V1! Not any later.

The day your engine will fail after you are committed to follow the SID (which you can't follow because of the gradient), what to do?
I would firewall the engine and resuscitate all my bush pilot skills...

Hasta la vista, baby!

Some airlines adopt the V1 failure only consideration and a later failure is the pilots' problem ... not very useful.

The more sensible approach is to run the analysis throughout so that the procedure addresses a failure at any point until the presumed flight path is above all obstacles ... a lot more work ... but easier to defend in court after the accident.

Suggest you check with your performance section as to which it is ... and, if the former, push for your union to jump up and down about it and try to move the philosophy to the latter ...

I bet we'll have to wait for a disaster (a huge one) before the airlines spend the money to make all the analysis required for real safety.
Probably the gods will continue to help us in the meantime.

:ugh:

Thank you all for your point of view. It seems that the best choice is not to be in that event in IMC conditions.

REGARDS

... IMC/VMC .. really doesn't matter .. at limiting WAT weights, especially, the climb gradient is so slight that one can't confidently eyeball the escape ...... it needs to be done on the drawing board or in the computer ....