[Milwaukee_Guy]

Thank God it was rolling at only 30 mph. It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.

This ever happen to anyone here?

[tom paine 2]

This happened to me about 15 years ago in Las Vegas. I was on a 727 leaving Vegas with a bunch of hung over gamblers. The plane got about half way down the runway when one of the engines made a loud pop sound. I saw a lot of people sober up quick, when we had to brake real quick.

[dfc62]

Happened to me once, going from Manchester to Edinburgh. We were accelerating down the runway when the skipper cut the engines and put the brakes on before taxing back to the terminal.

They put us on a completely different flight about 2 hours
later, I certainly would have been really wary about getting on the same plane that day.

[RightOnline]

"Thank God it was rolling at only 30 mph. It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.

This ever happen to anyone here?"

Yes. Not fun.

[Grut]

It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.

At that point, it's too late; you can't stop inside the confines of the runway because you've used most of it up and you're going too fast. Aircrews check the plane's actual accelleration against its calculated accelleration at much lower speeds and abort at that point if they don't match.

[Boundless]

> ...it was rolling at only 30 mph. It must be scary as
> heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff.
> This ever happen to anyone here?

Yep. As pilot, I had my seat pop out of detent and slide
back right at rotation (lift off). Fortunately, it was just
a single-engine Cessna, with ample remaining runway
to abort.

I had also been advised that another pilot had written up
the plane for the same problem, but it had been "fixed".
I wasn't so sure, so I had a plan...

...and a plan was necessary, because the natural reaction
would be to pull back on the yoke to restrain the seat slide,
which could be expected to at least result in a tail strike,
and at worst a stall and/or steep tail slide into the runway.

Unnerving, all the same.

[Salgak]

No, but it happened to a colleague of mine, and I was on the flight-line that day (it was in the USAF). The B-52's brakes on one "truck" were wired backwards, and thus dragging the aircraft. They were just under "committ" speed, also known as S-1, and rapidly running out of runway. They stood on the brakes, popped the drag chute, trailing molten copper from the stuck brakes, and went off the end of the runway. The crew compartment/nose snapped off the fuselage (but did not separate, the engine throttle and control-line wires didn't break). The crew evacuated the aircraft via the overhead escape/ejection hatches, with the engines still running: maitenance and the base Crash truck had to hack into all 4 engine pods to cut the fuel lines off. Minor injuries, physically, and the loss of an aircraft. Two of the students onboard the jet ended up turning in their wings afterwards. . . . and were medically discharged with psychological problems. My buddy wasn't one of the two, but he WAS pretty banged up. . .

[strela]

It must be scary as heck to abort a takeoff when you are nearing liftoff. This ever happen to anyone here?

(sea story alert)

Oh yeah. 1988, Yakota AFB, C-5B Galaxy. I was in the upper deck, flying Space A, waiting to take off to go back to the States for leave. I was told later that the aircraft was within 15 MPH of rotate speed, at full thrust going down the runway, when the inboard port engine partially sheared off and hung down from the plane, part of it dragging down the runway. I couldn't see what happened, but I still remember a loud bang and the plane lurching. The divots and pieces of metal we saw all over the runway the next day were pretty impressive.

After we were evacuated and everybody got back to the terminal, it took almost a week to get another flight. And, you lose your seat if you leave and they call your name. So, I sat in the MAC terminal for 6 days (couple of hours break every day for meals/shower, in my whites, on call) until another flight came up.

[WIladyconservative]

I was on a DC-10 headed for Europe in the 80's that aborted a takeoff due to weather. Don't know how close we were to take-off, but we were going fast enough to push you back in the seat. All of a sudden we were all flung forward (thank heaven for seatbelts), and drastically slowed down.

The pilot taxied around, waited a bit and took off. We found out after we were in the air that there was a thunderstorm in the path of our take off.

I'm still not very keen on flying . . .

[CommandoFrank]

Aborting a take-off roll is like slamming on the brakes in your car. The closer you get to lift-off the harder the effect. Flying is shear boredom enticed with moments of stark terror.