Airsupport

i agree with you 100%. this was a very RARE and almost Impossible scenario, but it did happen. however keeping it standard that day would have spelt disaster. a good pic can weed out the "ok we can handle this" from the "we wont make it in the air". and like you said in 99.9999999% of the time you take it into the air. even if the engine blew up, or caught on fire or whatever, the plane is built to fly single engine, and i seriously doubt the plane couldn't last the 20 minutes it would take to secure the engine, and bring it back around for landing.

Airsupport

even if that sensor is saying

"FLT SPLRS DEPLOYED"
"GLD DEPLOYED"
"GLD UNSAFE"

i am not trying beat this to death but you guys have to also think.. if all those things popped up just after v1 i think your certificate would be the last thing you would be worrying about.

Blkflyer

I totally agree with you.. I guess thats where Capt Authority comes in.. oh and Thinking outside the BOX

POPA

If these messages showed up and there was no accompanying deceleration or airspeed stagnation (as we could reasonably expect if the spoilers popped on takeoff) I'd probably still go.

ksuav8r

You are correct, in the event of a spoiler/gld deployment, things change, but for any kind of engine fire (I should have been a little clearer), the plane goes in the air past V1.

subicpilot

There is no concrete right or wrong answer. This scenario, like so many, is not black and white...only shades of gray.

This is why experience is so important and why Captains make the big bucks!

There have been cases of successful rejected takeoffs after V1 because in the captain's judgement, the aircraft either would not sustain flight, or getting airborne would be worse than the consequences of a high speed reject. (Note: If you do find yourself at the end of the long green table without a chair and a glass of water over a reject after V1, your answer had better state something like the previous sentence. That in your judgement as captain, the aircraft was not going to fly, or if it did manage to get airborne, it wasn't going to stay there long.) The spoiler problem mentioned above, and any kind of fire in the fuselage come to mind.

Likewise, rejecting prior to V1 does not necessarily guarantee you'll stop prior to rolling off the pavement. Windshear, for example could make is so you could never get airborne on that particular takeoff attempt, and you might not reach V1 until you have 100 feet of runway left.

Keep in mind that there is usually a very small split, if any, between V1 and VR, so we are quibbling about something that has an unbelievably small chance of happening...

ExperimentalAB

It's been a long time since I last flew with a Captain that could think outside the box...that's a little bit scary. I'm a pretty-sharp Captain-in-training, I think, but I don't have the experience to make some of the calls these guys should have been able to.

blastoff

Just in response to the engine fire thing...Engine fire = Engine burning Jet A and producing thrust. If you can't put it out, so what? Worse case the engine burns to the fuse bolts and it falls off...oh well, good thing I only need one anyways. Nothing about a Fire light ever means you can't make it to pattern altitude and fly a normal downwind to a visual or ILS...Abort after V1 and now you have a fire AND a high-speed abort...bad juju.

E1Out

From The Turbine Pilot's Flight Manual:

"V1: Takeoff Decision Speed

Let's start with V1, takeoff decision speed. Simply put, it is the "go or no-go" speed. If an abnormality occurs before V1 is reached, takeoff is to be immediately aborted. If an engine failure or other abnormality occurs after V1 is attained, takeoff is continued and any problem is treated in flight. Most airline and corporate flight departments have historically used V1 speeds based upon "balanced field length" for their particular aircraft. If an engine failure occurs exactly at V1, the distance required to abort the takeoff and stop is the same as the distance required to continue the takeoff. In familiar multiengine terms, this means that accelerate-go distance equals accelerate-stop distance."

In your example, you got the engine fire indication right at V1. Therefore, it would not only be legal, but also prudent to abort the takeoff.

Furthermore, in my first Captain PC, the examiner started a discussion by asking whether or not there were any circumstances in which I would consider aborting a takeoff after V1. After quite a bit of discussion, it was decided that under specific conditions, you might in fact use your best judgment and decide to abort the takeoff. It's the reason that airplanes aren't flown solely by computers, and that is what Captain's Emergency Authority is for.

In a Saab 340, with at least 10,000ft of runway left, with a possible engine fire, and no other extenuating circumstances - I'd venture to say that I absolutely would abort the takeoff. If it were a B747, with only 7,000ft of runway left - that would be a different story.

flyguyniner11

I'm kinda weary about any of our A-models actually flying if we had an V1 engine failure w/o a autocoarsen on a hot humid day, yikes!