At my current airline, the Captain decides if and when to abort when below V1. The standard brief from the Captain is "below V1 call out any abnormalities or malfunctions and if I decide to abort we will.....after V1 we will contiue the t/o and....". For anything abouve 100 kts we typically plan on calling out the fire equipment for at least a brake check. We also call V1 at V1.
I've jump seated in many major airline cockpits and I've never heard a briefing much different than this either. I have heard the "above 80 kts" thing while jumpseating in a regional cockpit last fall though. This is the only time I've ever been in a RJ cockpit and I remember thinking it was it was unusual and assumed it was that Captain's personal technique.
This is the same philosophy that has been been in place at all my flying jobs and taught at all my type training courses. It was also the philosophy at both of my USN P-3 squadrons.
At the risk of sounding argumentative, I think the captain maintaining a secret mental list of reject items is a bad idea. It seriously diminishes the benefit of having qualified crew working together, and eliminates (what should be) a trained set of eyes and experience from participating in the second most critical phase of our flight statistically (if memory serves). I have only worked for one airline, a regional, and we absolutely delineated between what was considered a high-speed regime and low-speed regime with respect to when an RTO was initiated. And either pilot could call for the reject, too. I now fly corporate and we do it the same way (not because of me). I think that it is safer to ratchet down the list of possible reject items after 80, too, because now the guy in the right seat can monitor the takeoff only looking for a very short list of malfunctions, and he can devote his attention to telling the captain if one arises outside of the ones that make us head for a ditch (that really only leave 1 item for him to look out for). This allows the captain to fly the airplane. If I'm flying, the second I have to make an interpretation, which I cannot seem to do without looking inside, I'm more likely to let the airplane get ahead of me. I would assert that we're all probably pretty similar in that respect. This way we have a perfect understanding of our duties:
Captain: Look outside and fly
F.O.: Monitor and tell me what's going on inside.
And after 80 there is little that I want to hear other than "REJECT" or "CONTINUE" (or whatever our standard calls may be). I guess what I'm saying is that having a very short list of reject items after 80 knots eliminates the decision making process that takes time and attention during a critical phase of flight.
I would also contend that there is very little chance that you and I could
A:Me determine that there is a problem that you need to know about
B: You to hear me, interpret what I said, and form a GOOD decision
C: Communicate that plan to me, and
D: Execute it
in less than about 5 seconds. If we are accelerating well, let's say 4 knots per second, that means that this process of communication will cost of 20 knots. Which will very very likely lead to an RTO above V1, which we all agree is bad news. Think about it, if it takes a person 5 knots just to say "V1", how many does it take for me to say "We have a left hydraulic pressure low indication" and then for the captain to interpret and react to that? I would say that process could easily take as much as 20 knots, all the while the airplane is gaining more and more energy which has to be dealt with. There is now a giant possibility that I've just said V1 and you said "REJECT". Now we're getting really confused. As YIP posted, there is ample data to back this up. I can't even say "we have a left hydraulic pressure low indication" in less than 2 seconds, no matter how hard I try. And I'm quite a fast, er, smooth talker.
A question for you. What if the PF is not the captain? Can he initiate a RTO? It stands to reason that if the captain is the only one who can decide whether or not we will reject a takeoff, then the FO should to all the takeoffs and let the captain monitor and focus on making these decisions. Allowing the FO to simply execute an RTO when told or Continuing safely in to the air, again when told. I mean, we don't even allow ourselves (in a perfect world) to turn our own heading knobs when we're hand flying the airplane way up in the sky, why now do we want to allow ourselves to be burdened with very critical thinking under a very real time pressure during one of the most dangerous parts of our flight?
