Aircraft crashed due to wrong take-off performance

[3WE]

...in my 46 years of flying airplanes for a living...

I totally respect your "unintended-consequences" / "false-warning-CAUSES-crashes" concern...

But "46 years" is a near-worthless argument because Gabriel does have a very fine list of many takeoffs where it FELT wrong, but they just couldn't put their finger on it even though two people ran and checked the math.

...and they achieved V1 with pavement remaining...

Excrement transpires (and I thought that you were different from Evan and made an actual human error or two in your career- where fortunately, the backup caught it).

I don't have every crash memorized but Air Florida at DC always comes to mind...sure, blame CRM "anti-ice"..."onuff"...(or blame a reluctance to firewall the throttles and smoke the engines instead of dunking the whole plane in ice water*) but why not?: A little green target zone around the airspeed needle (which I hope they ARE ALREADY monitoring) would have shown red very early in their takeoff run and lead to a halfway fat and dumb abort.

*Crap, I think this is yet ANOTHER instance where Gabriel feels that maybe the pulled up too much.

[3WE]

...Or side-view mirrors. There's an idea...

Old fashioned mirror technology instead of fancy electronic stuff? Are you feeling OK?

What if I told you that side view mirrors often do not show trailer tires...maybe especially the inside ones on the second axle? Are you prepared to start ranting at the safety discussion forum at Truckphotos.com???

...or (like flying) do you possibly have no actual real world experience at all whatsoever (or at least unwilling to divulge if you've ever pulled a trailer, or driven a car behind a trailer?)

Back to my first point: I cannot believe you would suggest such old technology when TPMS is both fancy, electronic AND can even provide important warning that a tire is going down...long before it falls apart, dangerously spewing large, heavy strips of rubber at car's in-trail...I'm thinking the body count there is probably even higher than that from inadequate takeoff acceleration.

[ATLcrew]

Plus, I never saw a pilot starting a stopwatch at the beginning of the TO roll (not you don't do it).

Spend a lot of time in airline flight decks. do ya?

[3WE]

Spend a lot of time in airline flight decks. do ya?

C'mon now, we got lots of cool (albeit generally ill-advised) Youtubes (just like Post #9 above- is it obvious when they note the time or click the stopwatch?...is this on an FCOM QRH checklist somewhere?)...

May I infer that videoing gets in the way of the stop watch?

[Black Ram]

You guys remember this one?

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/pilots-played-role-in-us-airways-1702-crash-faa-407032/

[Evan]

Every aircraft I fly except the -8 has a big old clock with a sweep second hand on it right in the dash!

Yeah, even the ones that mowed down some approach lights on the way out. And yet...

[Gabriel]

*Crap, I think this is yet ANOTHER instance where Gabriel feels that maybe the pulled up too much.

Pulled too much on the yoke and pushed too little on the throttles.

[Gabriel]

Besides the fact that at my company, and I assume most, the pilot flying enters the data, and the pilot monitoring checks it before we leave the gate. Gabriel, you want to make this rocket science, in my 46 years of flying airplanes for a living I have never had to call Houston for a launch window yet.

BB, I can't believe you are saying this. You know you cannot take yourself as a representative sample.
Say, just for the sake of the argument, that pilots do, on average, a fatal mistake (fatal as in people dies) every 500,000 flight hours. Say also (again, just for the sake of the argument, I know that this is not the case) that every pilot is equally good and skilled and equally likely to make a fatal mistake. Because no pilot logs 500K flight hours in their entire life, and most don't ever log even 1/10 of that, this means that the vast majority of the pilots will end, JUST BY CHANCE, without ever making a fatal mistake (i.e. killing anybody including themselves) in their entire career. And yet, because there are several million hours flown every year, this would mean several fatal mistakes per year. And we cannot blame the pilots because, again, they are all equal. Some of them (and, by chance, not others) just had the "luck" to be ones "selected by the fate" to make a fatal mistake.

How many times did the GPWS save your life? And the EGPWS? And the TCAS? How many times did you shut down 2 engines in the 747 in flight, and relied in the capability of the plane to remain aloft on 2 engines? How many times did you have to abort exactly at V1 in a runway that was barely legal length and needed every bit of performance to stop the plane within the tarmac? Did you ever find turbulence that bent your plane to the point that it was written off, but still held together to keep flying safely until its last landing? How many times did you need to use the RAT or windmilling engines to keep control of the plane while gliding to a safe dead stick landing? Have you ever hit the gear against a curb or similar obstacle and it got ripped off in a clean way so that the fuel tanks were not damaged? How many times was your life saved by the slides while evacuating a plane in flames and filled with smoke? And yet, all these things saved lives. Maybe not yours, but many others.

[BoeingBobby]

BB, I can't believe you are saying this. You know you cannot take yourself as a representative sample.
Say, just for the sake of the argument, that pilots do, on average, a fatal mistake (fatal as in people dies) every 500,000 flight hours. Say also (again, just for the sake of the argument, I know that this is not the case) that every pilot is equally good and skilled and equally likely to make a fatal mistake. Because no pilot logs 500K flight hours in their entire life, and most don't ever log even 1/10 of that, this means that the vast majority of the pilots will end, JUST BY CHANCE, without ever making a fatal mistake (i.e. killing anybody including themselves) in their entire career. And yet, because there are several million hours flown every year, this would mean several fatal mistakes per year. And we cannot blame the pilots because, again, they are all equal. Some of them (and, by chance, not others) just had the "luck" to be ones "selected by the fate" to make a fatal mistake.

How many times did the GPWS save your life? And the EGPWS? And the TCAS? How many times did you shut down 2 engines in the 747 in flight, and relied in the capability of the plane to remain aloft on 2 engines? How many times did you have to abort exactly at V1 in a runway that was barely legal length and needed every bit of performance to stop the plane within the tarmac? Did you ever find turbulence that bent your plane to the point that it was written off, but still held together to keep flying safely until its last landing? How many times did you need to use the RAT or windmilling engines to keep control of the plane while gliding to a safe dead stick landing? Have you ever hit the gear against a curb or similar obstacle and it got ripped off in a clean way so that the fuel tanks were not damaged? How many times was your life saved by the slides while evacuating a plane in flames and filled with smoke? And yet, all these things saved lives. Maybe not yours, but many others.

Houston, we have a problem here.

[Evan]

How many times did you have to abort at the exact moment before V1...

Gotcha?

[BoeingBobby]

Quote Originally Posted by Gabriel
"How many times did you have to abort at the exact moment before V1"

Dozens of times, in the simulator! And many dozens more at the exact moment AFTER V1

[Gabriel]

Gotcha?

Yes. Good catch.

[Gabriel]

And many dozens more at the exact moment AFTER V1

What made the plane unsafe or unable to fly?

[Gabriel]

Houston, we have a problem here.

Which is...?

[BoeingBobby]

What made the plane unsafe or unable to fly?

Remember I said in the simulator, so it will almost always be an outboard engine failure. And it was AFTER V1 so you fly!