Quote:
Originally Posted by pbflyz
Connie is cheap, though he recently got a bunch of good former NWA mechanics after NW busted the mechanics union... lot's of 747 experience there now.
Also, +1 on those 'R" powered classics. I loved those engines: Lots of thrust on those 830k takeoffs. I believe that they had one more stage of compression over the "Q"s. (It goes to 11!)
I don't fly them anymore, but I miss the airplane and am fortunate in that I never had to make that high-speed abort decision. That's a tough one.
Anyway, it's sad to see the loss of a nice machine, but the important thing is that the crew was able to walk away.
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Very true. "There but for the grace of god go I" and all. We train that exact scenario incessantly in the simulator. That might be part of the problem: When I'm in the "torture box", I expect to blow a motor on every take off, so I am spring-loaded to pound the rudder pedal to keep the airplane on the runway, and I'm concentrating on the decision: stop or go? all the way down the runway. In the real airplane, I'm not quite as ready, though I have a little technique: I keep my hand on the throttles until V1. As soon as I hear "V1", I take my hands off. If an engine blows up or the fire warning bell sounds, the fact that my hands aren't on the throttles reminds me to "go" instead of trying to stop.
There is only one accident that I can recall in which I would have attempted to stop the plane after V1: the incident in Detroit where a 727 clipped the wing of a DC-9 that had wandered onto an active runway in fog. Just past V1, the two planes hit and the 727 lost about 1/3 of its' left wing. That Captain managed to stop his 178,000 pound airplane from 145 mph in the remaining runway....just barely! Both planes were destroyed, but nobody was killed.
N