Royal Air Maroc Flight Nearly Overshoots Runway at London Gatwick Airport

The incident had occurred on February 28. According to the report, a RAM plane carrying 139 passengers nearly left the runway of London Gatwick airport as it was traveling at 360 kilometers per hour, reports the Daily Mail. It was an almost aborted takeoff.

That day, the airline’s plane was taking off from the London airport, bound for Casablanca. The RAM pilots had calculated that they would be halfway down the 3,200 m runway when they reached their rotation speed of 281 km/h - the point where the nose of the plane can be lifted. The report indicates that the captain was concerned when an automatic alert did not sound to indicate they had reached a speed where takeoff could no longer be aborted.

This late takeoff of the plane occurred only 120 meters from the end of the runway, and the nose of the plane should have been raised 13 seconds earlier, according to the flight plan. Fortunately, there were no defects on the plane and the flight management computer had worked normally on the previous and subsequent flights.

It was "likely" that the pilots had not entered the takeoff speeds into the jet’s flight management computer or had "inadvertently deleted them after entering them," the report concludes.