Well as far as officially ruling it out, I'll defer to the NTSB.
But seriously... we may not be able to definitively answer that question with the information currently available.
Here's a hypothetical (and maybe just a little far-fetched) scenario: unknown to the pilots, a passenger boards the plane with a large container of lead, and stows it in a forward baggage compartment. The plane's weight is now higher and the CG farther forward than what the pilots had calculated. Because of that, Vr now should be 165 instead of 145 knots, but the pilots don't know that.
So they start their takeoff roll. They reach V1... then 145 knots which they think is the correct Vr, but the plane doesn't rotate. They check trim and pull back harder on the yoke but no luck. At the moment the plane reaches 164 knots, they decide there's a control problem and initiate a rejected takeoff... run off the end of the runway, crash into a ditch, and die in a fire.
And they die never knowing that if they'd waited until the plane accelerated 1 knot more, they could have gotten airborne.
But seriously... we may not be able to definitively answer that question with the information currently available.
Here's a hypothetical (and maybe just a little far-fetched) scenario: unknown to the pilots, a passenger boards the plane with a large container of lead, and stows it in a forward baggage compartment. The plane's weight is now higher and the CG farther forward than what the pilots had calculated. Because of that, Vr now should be 165 instead of 145 knots, but the pilots don't know that.
So they start their takeoff roll. They reach V1... then 145 knots which they think is the correct Vr, but the plane doesn't rotate. They check trim and pull back harder on the yoke but no luck. At the moment the plane reaches 164 knots, they decide there's a control problem and initiate a rejected takeoff... run off the end of the runway, crash into a ditch, and die in a fire.
And they die never knowing that if they'd waited until the plane accelerated 1 knot more, they could have gotten airborne.
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