I understand why planes have to take off after reaching a certain point of the runway

[Monty91]

even if a fault is discovered that would otherwise mean they abort.

But in the case of the Air France concorde, which caught fire in the moments before the plane became airborne, surely you would make an exception? Surely careering off the end of the runaway and crashing into a f**king farmhouse or whatever is preferable to climbing thousands of feet into the sky with a massive fire to your engine?

[Pat Vegas]

It's the chance to you take. It's out of your hands at this point.

[Peter]

[Norn Iron]

of a take off :-)

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

Just so I know whether to bother, like.

[Monty91]

emanating from his left engine, would not have thought "Mmmmmm, y'know what? I think I'll take my chances here and stay on the ground." Or more specifically, why he wouldn't have been allowed to do so.

[PSRB]

so that you can tell the cabin crew if you see anything unusual, such as a fire or something fall off

The pilots obviously can't see it

[Pat Vegas]

[Pat Vegas]

to then try to dump the fuel on board. rather than smashing into a farmhouse full of fuel.

[Monty91]

[Hillary]

[Snin]

[Pat Vegas]

so take off or plough to death in a field.

[Snin]

[Maravilloso Marvo]

[Sir Charlie of Nicholas]

and density on the day, a speed will be calculated called V1. V1 is the maximum speed at which the take off may be aborted. After V1, an aborted take off will result in the aircraft careering off the end of the runway, which will almost inevitably result in the deaths of all on board. This, in industry parlance, is known as a bad thing.

When the fire klaxons and master alarms started sounding on the flight deck, (and I'm assuming the airspeed was above V1 here) the handling pilot, non-handling pilot and flight engineer would all have assumed the particular duties required to deal with the emergency. In this case, given that the master warning would have been *engine fire in no.1* we can surmise that the flight engineer would have been pulling the appropriate fire extinguisher handles while the non-handling pilot declared a Mayday and the handling pilot got on with getting the aeroplane away from the ground - which is generally the priority, until the situation us under control and the aeroplane can be returned to terra firma in a more controllable manner.

The point is that in the few seconds available the crew have a logical sequence of actions to go through to keep the aeroplane flying, sort out the problem, and then land it. The fact the the whole f**king wing was ablaze and that the aeroplane was doomed wasn't information that would have been available to them.

Without knowing the full ins and outs of the investigation, it would appear that they did exactly the right thing.

[Snin]

:-)

[Pat Vegas]

screaming at you. TOO LOW TERRAIN. PULL UP!
Imagine at work if you are trying to send an email people standing there shouting at you. CAPITAL LETTER, FULL STOP!

[Snin]

[Pat Vegas]

get your laughing gear around this before i slap down the landing gear

[Monty91]

however, watching a video of the concorde crash, it seems that the entire ******* wing was on fire :-(

[Monty91]

[Snin]

[Snin]

[Snin]

[Maravilloso Marvo]

[PSRB]

[Nicosia Gooner]

[7evens]

I'm sure even M could have calculated the end game from there.

[Snin]

[Monty91]

[Snin]

And I feel you are only person who can take a proper level of abuse without getting all prissy , in my pier group we could even do mum jokes about my mates recently dead mum... Life's tool short esp about bloody awimb