"Ramapriya" wrote in message

.... a string of aircraft took off
virtually tailing one another. Most of them were A330s, and the rest
were 747s and A340s, with the odd A320 and 737.

Makes me ask you folk this... are wake vortex caveats for real?

Very real. But, when you say "tailing one another", how tight do you mean?
What was your estimate of the separation? 1 minute? 2 minutes? 30
seconds? 10 seconds? There is no hard wingtip or flap edge vortex until
the wing starts to generate substantial lift, and these vortices tend to
sink at about 500 fpm quite promptly. So a lot of similar performance
aircraft with 1 minute separation will mostly be climbing out above the
vortices from the craft in front.