Originally Posted by wideman
the a/c becomes airborne virtually simultaneously.
Not when you're heavy. Even in the DC9 that I fly the delay from the beginning of rotation until the main wheels liftoff can be up to about three seconds. We rotate initially to about 10 degrees aircraft nose up (ANU) then wait for the mains to lift off before continuing the rotation to a taget of about 18 degrees ANU. The target rate of rotation is 3 degrees per second so it would ideally take just over 3 seconds to hit the 10 deg ANU mark and almost 3 more to reach 18 ANU.