Hey everyone,
I’ve been flying the MD-80 variants every now and then but the last few flights I’ve had really poor takeoff performances. I’m talking runway overruns and extremely low takeoff speeds. Even with full power, the Maddog wants to stay on the ground.
I was not overloaded & Takeoff-Confoguration was fine. Those were 3-4h flights which the MD80 could usually handle. The only factor I could think of would be hot weather, but that should not affect the aircraft to the point to be so slow on long runways such as Madrid (LEMD).
Did anyone else have similar experiences? Am I doing something wrong?
Thank you so much in advance!
I had the same experience somewhere in Saudi-Arabia. Hot weather indeed, needed a takeoff run the size of an ocean
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Ok, good to know! At least you didn’t take the entire Arabian Peninsula 
It would be great to know if this is close to reality. Taking off above ~30°C/86F seems to be almost impossible lately, at least with my flights.
Hot weather will cause this as well as high altitude. I was on a United Airlines B737-200 years ago out of Denver for Dallas Ft. Worth. It was almost 100F degrees. Our takeoff roll seemed sluggish. We were gaining speed but slowly. I looked out the window and could see the end of the runway coming at us. Honestly I didn’t think we were going to make it. I told my buddy to put his head down and I did too. I was still able to look out the window a bit. The plane rotated but the main wheels stayed on the runway. Our main wheels actually went into the grass after the runway and we lifted off the grass about 15 yards after the runway. We climbed out and the rest of the flight to KDFW was uneventful. We were also heavy with not an empty seat on the plane. So yes it can happen if it’s hot, high altitude, and a heavy aircraft.
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Thanks for sharing the amazing story 
I am aware of reduced takeoff performances with altitude, weight and temperature. But I didn’t expect it’s gonna be THAT bad in the sim when flying the MD80. I will be more cautious next time with the weather and weight 
My friend works the ramp at KBOS, he says summer time you check and recheck weights, in winter they fight to get all the cargo to just fit.
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High temp really effects on how engine produces thrust. On a really hot day expect to see decrease in engine performance primarily due to hotter air is less dense as a result the engine is taking in less air molecules, Jet engines work on principle being large amount of air being compressed at the front by low pressure compressors which is then carried into core of the engine for combustion process (compressed air mixing with fuel), If there is less air to begin with then the output would be greatly reduced.
LEMD Madrid is also located close to 2000ft so that’s another problem, there is something called “density altitude” (you can google it) which would have effected. Higher the density altitude, degraded engine performance.
MD80 is an older generation of airplane as result it doesn’t have all of new technological advancement there were made to newer generations of engines.
IRL you would probably be performance limited and your take-off weight will be much lower then maximum structural take-off weight - probably end up taking less payload/cargo then normally you would on a cold day.
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Note that I do not have this aircraft, nor do I fly airliners as a rule. But one thing that struck me in this thread: while engine performance is a thing, I am surprised that nobody has commented on the effect of density altitude on TAS and wing lift. A quick look at public MD-80 info online shows takeoff speeds at around 130 to 140kts IAS, depending on model. A quick calc of TAS at 2,000ft and 30°C would indicate that the TAS under these conditions would increase by around 8 - 9kts from sea level at ISA IAS. Lower air pressure would further compound matters. This at a time when the engines are not developing full power.
Note that I have flown in DC-9/MD-80’s quite a few times IRL and I was never particularly impressed by their takeoff performance. I don’t know if the Leonardo software includes access to takeoff performance, but I suspect if you were to find a source and look it up, the length of the takeoff run would increase quite significantly at the stated conditions.
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