Originally Posted by Bilsch

As a former airline Lead Mechanic for 20+ years, I have dealt with several post high speed RTO aircraft. A couple were on the A-320 following an airspeed split caused by love bugs getting into the pitot tubes (in MCO) and causing flawed data being sent by the ADM. A couple for engine issues. Others for non-mechanical.

If you have ever tried to move an aircraft with 4 flats it would take quite amount of T/L input! If you did move the aircraft with flats, it can damage the brakes and surrounding structure (antiskid xducers, hyd lines, etc,). The reason for not setting the brakes is to prevent fire and to allow them to cool. On the bus, the carbon brakes can take the heat, but they take a long time to cool. Any of you who fly the aircraft in the summer know this, since you have probably had to wait for them to cool prior to pushback (or had a rather resourceful lead man use the A/C hose directed toward them to make an on-time departure) at one time or another. I also had a full 747-200F RTO at SFO with a full load. My crew ended up changing all 16 mains. We had to borrow tires from others to get this one back out. No comment on why this RTO happened.

Setting hot brakes causes all the heat to transfer to the axle, and to the bearings and other gear structure. Leaving them off allows the stacks of rotors to "breath" allowing them to cool more quickly.

I know of pilots who have taxied back to the gate quickly after an RTO knowing that fuses were going to melt. As soon as they got to the gate, the tires would start going. It was much easier to change them at the gate then on the taxiway, but for safety, I am not sure if that was a good idea.

One more thing; never, ever, approach an overtemped brake and or tire assy from the side. Always approach from the front or rear (direction of rotation). If you have ever seen one of them blow, you will understand. We always wait until the assemblies have sufficiently cooled to even attempt to do any maintenance on them.

Also, to change the tires after they all go flat, we used what is called a rhino jack...very low profile to under the jack point.