A Qantas 747-400 flight from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to Australia aborted the takeoff early this week, but came to a stop safely with nothing more than a few blown tires. The 747 was probably near maximum takeoff weight as it was flying nonstop to Sydney, Australia with 242 passengers. The reason for the abort was the pilot had some type of warning light illuminate in the cockpit. No one was hurt, and the plane was later towed off an adjacent taxiway and to a hangar for repairs.

It's because of incidents like this that the FAA requires commercial aircraft manufacturers to conduct rejected take off testing as part of the aircraft model certification process. The manufacturer has to take a fully loaded aircraft, perform a normal takeoff using full thrust, and then right before the plane becomes airborne, abort the takeoff and use maximum braking to stop the plane in as short a distance as possible. Oh, and the brakes used on the test airplane can't be brand new, they have to have been worn down to 10% of their original thickness. Finally, because so much heat is generated by the maximum braking action, the brake system must be able to resist a fire for up to five minutes (estimated time it takes for airport fire fighting equipment to arrive) after the plane has come to a stop . Typically so much heat is generated that some or all of the tires on the landing gear usually blow out during the test, as appears to have happened with this Qantas airplane. Assuming that the Qantas 747-400 was using the longest runway at LAX, which is 12,000 feet in length, and that the pilot used at least 7000 feet of that to get to takeoff speed, then only about 5000 feet of runway remained to come to a complete stop. Pretty impressive considering the 747-400 had a takeoff weight of at least 700,000 lbs, and was probably going about 160 mph when the decision to abort was made.