I would be astounded if there was anything the pilots could have done to prevent this.

The plane was two engines out and a main fuel tank on fire, fully laden with a full fuel load. No amount of training or improvisation was going to fix that.

If anything it's lucky/professional they crashed into an industrial park and didn't have time for a go around. It would have been an even bigger disaster if they'd crashed into the town centre or a residential area.

> I don’t know if a double engine failure at V1 on a fully loaded 3 engine aircraft is technically survivable

Not on the MD-11, anyway.

There is some margin in the calculations. But the training is very very clear, before V1 you must abort and after V1 you must continue. No discussion, no decision to make. You call V1, hands go off the throttles and no matter what you're going to fly.

The margin is for example that the plane must not just be able to fly, but also reach a minimum climb gradient to clear obstacles with a bit of safety margin. There is also an allowance for the time it takes from calling abort to actually hitting the brakes. And for example headwind is part of the calculation (it makes the takeoff distance shorter) but only 50% of the headwind is used in the calculations.

But all of those margins are not for the crew to use, the crew must just execute the procedure exactly as trained which means at V1 you're committed to continue the takeoff. And before V1 in case of an engine failure you have to hit the brakes to make sure you can stop before the end of the runway.

> Wouldn't veering into highway at 30 mph be weighted against certain, big loss of life?

V1 for this plane in those conditions is nearly 200 mph. Even if they shut down all engines and applied full brakes (and assuming the brakes/tires didn't catch fire), they'd still run off the end of the runway with enough kinetic energy to kill themselves and anyone else in the way.

V1 is the decision speed with respect to a single engine failure in a multi-engine aircraft. It's the speed below rotation speed at which the decision to abort safely can no longer be made.

Captains can make the decision to abort the takeoff in the case of absolute power loss or for 'failure to fly' (where the aircraft is clearly not going to fly, e.g. the elevator/pitch controls aren't responding). But the training is adamant: if you're uncertain what has happened after V1 you try to fly the plane away from the runway.

After you reach V1, you take off.

Between V1, Rotate and V2, there’s like a 2-3kts difference (between each of them).

I am not familiar what the procedure is if you have dual-engine failure at or above V1.

A fully loaded plane is extremely likely to turn into a fireball if it hits anything on the ground, even at 30mph. It's just a thin shell of aluminum with tons of fuel sloshing inside.