Week 5 Period: Takeoff, and the point of commitment

The first simulator period, built around the speed after which stopping is no longer one of your options

22 March 2027

Before you arrive#

Compute refusal speed for three runway states you will be given. Bring the working. You will fly with your own numbers, including if they are wrong.

In this period#

Every takeoff roll contains a speed — specific to today’s weight, runway and air temperature — after which there is no longer enough runway left to stop. Before it, an engine problem means an abort. After it, the same problem means going flying with it.

The number itself is arithmetic done at home. What the simulator teaches is what arithmetic cannot: the decision has to already be made when the speed arrives, because it arrives inside a loud thirty seconds and does not announce itself.

Students fail this period one particular way: not by aborting too early or continuing too late, but by hesitating at the number — spending the one resource that matters, then doing the right thing two seconds after it stopped being right.

The period runs this repeatedly, with failures inserted at randomised points on either side of refusal speed, until the response stops containing a pause.

Afterwards#

Recompute your three refusal speeds with a 15-knot tailwind and note how far down the runway the decision moves. Bring both sets to week 6.