I'm not trying to be mean here, but those are both 'not' perfect examples and directly at odds with the rejected takeoff philosophy at Delta Air Lines. While there has been some massaging of the abort procedures during my career, they have been pretty much static for the last decade or so. Our annual recurrent Sim training tends to focus on the hot industry safety scenarios, but in recent years, rejected takeoff training shows up constantly because unfortunately, both at Delta and industry wide, we continue to abort for issues that are counter to the stated philosophy.

A rejected Takeoff is an inherently dangerous procedure. As pilots we are taught to build 'time' into whatever abnormal situation occurs...too literally sit on our hands by not making snap decisions and asking for vectors or holding to make more time. Mistakes happen when forced to react quickly. There are only a handful of "no time" events that must be dealt with immediately and one of them is a rejected takeoff. The incident reports are full of poorly executed high speed aborts for dubious (and sometimes non existent) problems that result in runway excursions. Even if you stop correctly, you set yourself up for a passenger initiated evacuation which undoubtedly will result in injuries. The fact is that the plane will fly just fine with doors open, electrical power lost, holes in the roof, passenger illnesses, failed A/C packs, even failed engines post V1. With just a few exceptions, it is always safer to take the jet into the air and add 'time' to whatever abnormal occured by asking for a nice long downwind, completing the apropriate checklists, expanding your team to include dispatchers, MX, and F/As and returning for a landing if need be.

To make the reject decision simpler, once we enter the high speed regime, there are really only 4 situations that we would consider an abort for. We NEVER abort for doors. Apart from those four items that we brief to start every trip, everything else is a nuissance warning, and indeed, many planes 'inhibit' some of these caution messages during takeoff to eliminate extraneous info. Of the few things that we would abort for, there's almost nothing that an F/A can tell me that I'm not going to get a more efficent warning of in the cockpit. The only thing that I can possibly see the need for an F/A to break sterile cockpit for during the high speed regime is some type of uncontrolled cabin fire. That's it....and if they're not being taught that, they ought to be. I'm going to give the F/A in this scenario the benefit of the doubt and assume that she was really just calling the other flight attendants. If not, I have a hard time believing that the Captain even answered the call......I wouldn't have. The thought of the Captain fiddling with the audio selector panel or handset while speeding down the running and trying to scan for items that actually might be worth aborting for is worrying.