USMCFLYR

Source - Profesional Pilot Magazine August 2013
Pilot Technique - T/O overruns and veer-offs on slippery runways with crosswinds:

I'd be interested to hear some sea stories of RTOs/aborts that our forum members have experienced.
How do you think your training has prepared you for a possible RTO scenario?

Grumble

This has been a hot topic in the F-18 community lately. We've had a number of incidents lately with guys RTO'ing in the high speed regime, and 90% of the cases were either poor or no take off performance number planning.

Phantom Flyer

Thanks Jarhead, this is an excellent topic for discussion.

I'm not a lawyer but believe that by definition, once the "V1" call has been made and the aircraft passed that calculated speed, the decision should be to "Go". At "Vr", if a different speed, the rotation begins and regardless of the emergency, the aircraft is committed to takeoff. That's by most FOM's, Ops manuals and the FAR's.

To sprinkle in a bit of realism, let's say we are departing runway 31L at JFK, which has a lot of concrete. If we have an engine failure at V1, the Captain may elect to abort thinking that it's better to use the concrete and stop the aircraft rather than taking the engine failure into the air. If the Captain can keep the aircraft on the hard surface, it would appear that was a good decision. If; however, the aircraft veers off the runway, then an incident/accident has occurred and the water gets muddier. If the WX was at or below minimums, the choice is even more difficult to assess.

This is what both front seats need to be thinking about and clearly verbalize PRIOR to brake release and the reason that a good take-off briefing is critical, especially under trying conditions: weather, wet runway, any contamination, etc. It's why the Captain gets the big bucks...or at least, used to.

In my 30+ years of operating under 121, there were only a handful of aborts and none in the high speed regime. Most "irregularities" were electrical problems and there was a redundancy of power sources so even at or below minimums, the decision was to "Go".

Great thread and it will be interesting to see what others have experienced.

G'Day Mate and Semper Fi. Uurraahhhh

USMCFLYR

Guess my attempts ended up falling on deaf ears through the years then
High speed aborts were one of the issues that I tried to address quite a bit during my time working with the NATOPS Model Manager - at least in the RAGs with our predictable and heart of the envelope configurations and such.
During my NATOPS checks we would cover the individual pilots abort criteria and performance numbers. I'd say at least 1/3rd of them would usually end up aborting for an issue that they said they would not abort for in the brief.

Coming to the civilian world of flying I was hoping for some great training in the performance world - but I was sadly istaken so I've taken upon myself to try and get better OJT and additional academic training iside our own Training Dept. The old standby of the afterburner will get you out of trouble prevailed in the Hornet community for the most part.
We had a Spanish exchange pilot abort once at El Centro. Ended up with Class C damage - all because he didn't know/forgot that he had 500+ rounds of 20mm in the nose during the first few days of Strike Det!

My own story is similar as a RAG student. Had just come back from a Fighter Det with slicked off Hornets. First hop back at home field with a single centerline and a few pylons strapped on - I didn't feel like the plane was accelerating or ready for nose wheel takeoff at the right time so I aborted. Pulling the tapes you could see that even though I made the decision to abort at around 120 kts, it was actually 147 kts before I actually got the throttles pulled back. Absolutely no reason to abort other than poor SA on my part. This incident ended with a brake fire and blowing the plugs.

TheFly

#2 engine produced signifigantly less than take off power which resulted in an aborted t/o.

John Carr

All too true. Depending on the scenario/situation, the crew can either look like heroes or complete idiots depending on the outcome.

I can't remember exactly, but wasn't there a legacy 747 at JFK(?) that did a high speed abort (possibly past V1) that didn't end up so well? And like many other accidents/incidents, the root cause was human factors, SPECIFICALLY a disagreement whether or not to stop or go?

The plane I was flying at the time WASN'T anything near an F18, and granted it was "sim land". But once on a PC the instructor gave a malfunction above 100kts and about 10 below V1. Our recognition/reaction time would probably rate as average, but the amount of speed gain between recognition and TL's to idle and braking being applied was a healthy split. The lesson was, in some planes, once you get fast (like above 100kts, etc) the acceleration/energy/momentum can easily be underestimated.

rickair7777

Abort after V1 is not absolutely proscribed, as always PIC authority and judgement prevails. Something like a severe controllability problem might best be handled on the ground, even if it means an over-run. Odds are high that abort after V1 is not the best option, but it's not an absolute.

USMCFLYR

Perfect John Carr - and this was exactly one of the points that I briefed specifically in the Hornet on those emergency sims -- the rate of exceleration from airspeed alive (48 kts in the HUD) to the 100 kts was on one level - but that rate increased significantly above 100 kts upto NWLO speed and takeoff speed (which btw - soetime abort speed was above NWLO speed and I would say that once I get light on the nose - the airplane is going flying)
Another item that I would talk about specifically in the training.checking.
There was an mishap where a pilot went into and out of blower numerous times while trying to make the decision to abort (KRDU if you remember Grumble). I would use the example of the guy who starts to pull into an intersection with oncoming traffic and then decides to stop and go two or three times. He now has confused the situation along with everyone else! make the decision and stick with it. In the end - there were only 5 reasons (in my bag of tricks) to abort for above 100 kts. I did feel lucky that the airplane handled very well on a single engine for instance and it really was often safer to take THAT aircraft airborne than do a high speed abort (especially with its LACK of off-field motoring performance!)

Rama

Aborted in a classic 747 coming out of Amsterdam a while back. Captain was pf I was pm. He had a heads up when he saw a duck approaching us as I was monitoring/calling speeds. Ingested said bird into #3 and aborted at about 140 knots (below v1) Turned out okay, engine was severely damaged-fist size chunks of the fan blades were missing.
Most US airline train captains hands on throttles until the v1 call and then removed. Post v1 aborts typically end up bad.

Twin Wasp

NW had a tire pop on a Classic freighter leaving ANC in the late 90s. A bit before V1. Many times a tire will take other tires on the same truck with it. So the crew was faced with loud noises as the tires were hitting the fuselage. They rejected about V1 plus 10. Ended up using 11,000 feet of 10,700 runway.