V1, Rotate- and the jet won't. You're the FO..

F

Firebird2XC

Well-Known Member
A hypothetical situation...

"After V1, we treat it as an in-flight emergency. All else as previously briefed.."

13,000 foot dry runway. Optimal conditions with a close to full load.

You're cleared to go, you accelerate to V1. 'Rotate' is called- but the plane won't.

The Captain is on the controls. You have burned 3000 feet of runway, and the signs say you have 9000 feet remaining. Rather than abort, the Captain begins to retrim the airplane and pull back on the yoke to try and get the airplane off the ground.

You're the FO. What do you do?
 
Didn't this happen with a Midwest MD-80 in BOS a couple years ago? If I remember right there was some kind of mechanical problem with the elevator and the plane just wasn't going flying any time soon.
 
Be sure you are on tape, "CA, abort, abort....V1 failed..." or somethign along those lines.... ;)

somewhat a bit of :sarcasm:
 
Firebird2XC said:
A hypothetical situation...

"After V1, we treat it as an in-flight emergency. All else as previously briefed.."

13,000 foot dry runway. Optimal conditions with a close to full load.

You're cleared to go, you accelerate to V1. 'Rotate' is called- but the plane won't.

The Captain is on the controls. You have burned 3000 feet of runway, and the signs say you have 9000 feet remaining. Rather than abort, the Captain begins to retrim the airplane and pull back on the yoke to try and get the airplane off the ground.

You're the FO. What do you do?
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With those conditions, why would the brief be "After V1, we treat as an inflight emergency", without any caveats? Seems one wouldn't be taking into consideration the fact that there's excess runway left to use vs a situation where V1 is a true driver of not going off the departure end. Or is that procedural?
 
Well my brief goes something like... blah blah blah blah blah blah.... *snore*. Most likely I'd already be sleeping with my ipod on after spiking my hair one more time.

If I was a good pilot, and I'm assuming I'm reading your situation correctly, I'd yank the power off and say something along the lines of "Damn thing isn't flying, abort! ... and I need a coffee, go make me one old timer before I beat you with your own cane. Also, some generic comment about kids and their sex parties and their rock and roll."
 
1) Cross check airspeed on captain side's airspeed indicator first.
2) Check flaps set for take off.
3) Check elevator trim position to make sure it is in take off range.
5) If airspeed, flaps and trim are correct and the airplane still isn't behaving like an airplane and I still have what I think is a safe accellerate stop distance I will call for a rejected take off (abort, abort, abort.)

That may not be exactly what was briefed, but first and formost you should flexible and responsive incase things change. If you were going down the runway, you hit V1 and the wing falls off I don't think it is appropriate for you to continue pulling back on the yoke and trying to get the airplane in the air simply because you are going faster than V1. There is obviously something wrong with either the power output or the aerodynamic characteristic of the airplane. I'm not sure trying to force it into the air is the safest thing you can do, unless youre positive you're going run off the end of the runway.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
1) Cross check airspeed on captain side's airspeed indicator first.
2) Check flaps set for take off.
3) Check elevator trim position to make sure it is in take off range.
5) If airspeed, flaps and trim are correct and the airplane still isn't behaving like an airplane and I still have what I think is a safe accellerate stop distance I will call for a rejected take off (abort, abort, abort.)

That may not be exactly what was briefed, but first and formost you should flexible and responsive incase things change. If you were going down the runway, you hit V1 and the wing falls off I don't think it is appropriate for you to continue pulling back on the yoke and trying to get the airplane in the air simply because you are going faster than V1. There is obviously something wrong with either the power output or the aerodynamic characteristic of the airplane. I'm not sure trying to force it into the air is the safest thing you can do, unless youre positive you're going run off the end of the runway.
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I don't know about all you guys, but these accidents where the trim isn't right, or the flaps aren't right or the speed isn't right scare the hell out of me, between the beginning of the befores to the end of the runway item check I must look at those things 3 times each.

To add: and ever since that stupid Charlie West accident I refuse to drop the "1" on my speeds of "140, 145, ... blah blah blah".
 
jynxyjoe said:
I don't know about all you guys, but these accidents where the trim isn't right, or the flaps aren't right or the speed isn't right scare the hell out of me, between the beginning of the befores to the end of the runway item check I must look at those things 3 times each.
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I wish I could look at them three times. We now set the flaps on the taxi out to the runway.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
1) Cross check airspeed on captain side's airspeed indicator first.
2) Check flaps set for take off.
3) Check elevator trim position to make sure it is in take off range.
5) If airspeed, flaps and trim are correct and the airplane still isn't behaving like an airplane and I still have what I think is a safe accellerate stop distance I will call for a rejected take off (abort, abort, abort.)

That may not be exactly what was briefed, but first and formost you should flexible and responsive incase things change. If you were going down the runway, you hit V1 and the wing falls off I don't think it is appropriate for you to continue pulling back on the yoke and trying to get the airplane in the air simply because you are going faster than V1. There is obviously something wrong with either the power output or the aerodynamic characteristic of the airplane. I'm not sure trying to force it into the air is the safest thing you can do, unless youre positive you're going run off the end of the runway.
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what is step 4?
 
I'm not sure I'd want to wrestle the controls away from the skipper at this point so with that, it'll probably fly the way he's trying to fly it.

Once you land again using trim, get taken off the trip, call the chief pilot and go grab a beer or 12.
 
A lot of guys will brief that after V1 if there's an issue with flight controls and we're still on the ground then we're aborting. Especially with a long runway in an RJ. I agree with Jynx on this... This scenario scares the • out of me because on a short runway there likely isn't a good outcome after V1 and a configuration issue. Could you imagine this happening someplace like Charlie West and you realize the flaps aren't set right? Abort and go off a cliff. Continue... Go off same cliff.
 
With nine thousand feet to go, and the assumption that the guesswork of a weight and balance has resulted in the trim being set for a different CG than we're actually at, I'd have little objection to the takeoff continuing for another few seconds. That's all it should take to figure out if it's trimmed wrong or there is a legitimate elevator malfunction. I'm assuming this is in an ERJ-135/145, so there's not much that could be screwed up in the way of cargo because there's just not that much room for it all to go. Even if there are zero bags or the compartment is bulked or grossed out when it supposedly isn't, I'm confident that the plane can fly with a normal passenger seating arrangement (i.e. spread evenly throughout).

Giving an additional few seconds in this instance should leave 6000-7000 feet to stop which is more than enough on dry pavement.

I guess I'm not exactly sure what "won't rotate" really means though. If it's full elevator all the way back and the nose doesn't even pop off the pavement a little, then that's a different scenario than what I'm thinking of.
 
bronco21016 said:
A lot of guys will brief that after V1 if there's an issue with flight controls and we're still on the ground then we're aborting. Especially with a long runway in an RJ. I agree with Jynx on this... This scenario scares the out of me because on a short runway there likely isn't a good outcome after V1 and a configuration issue. Could you imagine this happening someplace like Charlie West and you realize the flaps aren't set right? Abort and go off a cliff. Continue... Go off same cliff.
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Agree. Better to keep a ground emergency a ground emergency, in this scenario of excess runway remaining, then to turn it into an air emergency that could become a disaster when it didn't need to. To me, if a plane doesn't want to fly, is telling you in no uncertain terms it doesn't want to fly, and the reason it doesn't want to fly isn't immediately apparent; then it probably not wise to force it into the air.

In this same scenario with a short runway, yeah, you're kind of screwed. You can crash off the end in an abort (depending whats off the departure end of the runway), or you can get airborne and crash somewhere further beyond the end.

Still, as Nick mentioned, define "won't rotate". IE- does trim feel like it's not set correctly....nose gets light but won't unstick, or does it feel like something back there isn't physically connected and the yoke is doing nothing?
 
jtrain609 said:
I'm not sure I'd want to wrestle the controls away from the skipper at this point so with that, it'll probably fly the way he's trying to fly it.

Once you land again using trim, get taken off the trip, call the chief pilot and go grab a beer or 12.
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You're telling me you'll allow an airplane to fly with a potentially damaged control surface because it'll probably fly? Sorry, but probably ain't good enough for me. If the yoke doesn't rotate me, and the trim and flaps are set right, and the speeds are good - which is why we make an "80kts" call, or whatever your company has - then we're going to abort the takeoff - even after V1. V1 is predicated on the airplane being able to fly. If the airplane isn't fly-able then we're not going flying. I'd rather go off the end at 30kts then go try to fly an airplane without elevator control. You don't know why the elevator isn't operable, it could be jammed there could be a mis-rig, or it could be something worse that you can't anticipate. Something as simple as the trim being rigged backwards could render the airplane virtually uncontrollable in the first 50' as you try to figure out what the hell is going on. No, if the airplane doesn't respond to rotate, and everything else is good, we're gonna abort.

Consider this: this is going to be an easy abort, you're mostly likely going to have max reverse, max braking and anti-skid. While you're playing test-pilot with the airplane at this point, I'd rather play test pilot on the ground then play test pilot in the air. With an engine failure, its no-brainer, the airplane has been tested, you know it will continue to fly after V1. With a faulty control surface, you don't know what the hell will happen or if the airplane will be controllable after rotation.
 
One thing I see missing from all the briefs mentioned is what to do with a malfunction passed V1 with a aircraft INCAPABLE of flight.

Agreed, if an aircraft can fly, it's better to get the thing airborne and deal with it off the deck. However, there are emergencies that occur past V1 that aren't only unsafe, but just plain make the aircraft a very large paperweight. One of the dreaded in our lovely 707 is the loss of both engines same side while heavyweight.

All of our takeoff briefs say something to the effect, "Prior to V1, call out abort... After V1, state short description and treat as in-flight, unless in the aircraft commanders opinion the aircraft is incapable of flight."
 
Announcing it as Control Jam, not "it won't rotate" will prob. get the captain to abort immeadiatly. Just saying it's not rotating introduces variables, and makes him want to check. Trust me, if the FO yells Controlls jammed, i'm going max brake, max reverse. I'm not even going to touch the yoke to find out.

In the 1900, If i recall memory items were to attempt to overcome the jam, if unable abort. fwiw.
 
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