Airbus failed to tell safety board of rudder problem

NewsDay ^ | October 12, 2004 | SYLVIA ADCOCK

[NCjim]

Flight 903 to Miami was bumpy, but it was when the plane went into a holding pattern over West Palm Beach that the pilot nearly lost control, injuring a flight attendant. That was in 1997.

Now, as the National Transportation Safety Board prepares to release its final report on the crash of American Flight 587 in Queens three years ago, an internal memo from Airbus dated five weeks after the 1997 accident documents that the company already knew that if a pilot abruptly moves the rudder back and forth, the force can break the tail -- the major lesson from the Flight 587 investigation.

<snip>

Flight 903, an Airbus 300, landed safely. In the crash of Flight 587, the pilot flying the Airbus 300 began a series of back-and-forth rudder movements as he responded to the wake turbulence from a Boeing 747 just ahead. The tremendous stress on the tail of the plane built up as the pilot moved the rudder, and exactly 93 seconds after takeoff, the giant fin ripped off. The aircraft crashed into a Belle Harbor, Queens, neighborhood, killing all 260 on board and five on the ground.

Safety experts say the information in the Airbus memo on Flight 903 should have been shared with investigators and regulators. "The failure to do so precluded any possibility of the NTSB preventing Flight 587," said Bernard Loeb, former aviation safety director of the NTSB.

"If we had been notified at the time of 903, no doubt we would have pushed beyond that, asked questions and probably done a good deal of work. It is very possible we would have learned something that might have precluded the 587 accident ... The fact that the possibility existed is not just a lost opportunity but an outrage."

[RoughDobermann]

"If it ain't Boeing, I ain't goin'"

Of course, 737s had their share of rudder issues too.

[Strategerist]

Now, as the National Transportation Safety Board prepares to release its final report on the crash of American Flight 587 in Queens three years ago, an internal memo from Airbus dated five weeks after the 1997 accident documents that the company already knew that if a pilot abruptly moves the rudder back and forth, the force can break the tail -- the major lesson from the Flight 587 investigation.

Wow, the evil geniuses at the NTSB had enough foresight to forge a memo in 1997 from Airbus just in case an Airbus crashed due to a Shoebomb four years later and they needed to cover it up!

(Sarcasm off)

[RayChuang88]

If I remember correctly, three 737's were lost due to pilots not being able to control the yaw of the plane due to rudder control issues.

I do know that before Boeing issued a fix by replacing the rudder actuating mechanism that Southwest Airlines specifically trained their pilots (who flew exclusively 737's) how to properly handle the plane in case of rudder problems.

[RayChuang88]

Psst--if there was a passenger detonating a shoe bomb just when the plane took off you'd see 1) the chemical residue from the explosion and 2) the blast pattern from an explosion. The NTSB didn't find either case.

[syriacus]

I've hated every Airbus flight I've gone one. I'm pretty sure I was in a different model than the one which crashed.

How would I describe the flights?
Moment after moment after moment of Shake-shudder-Shake-Rattle-Shake-Shiver-Shake-Shiver-Shudder- Shiver. The shakes were small and quick and closely spaced, not coarse.

It was pretty similar to driving in a car down one of the better built cobblestone roads of my younger years. Of course the car wasn't going to drop thousands of feet, because it wasn't depending on wings that could drop off due to metal fatigue.

[Roccus]

As in the case of Flt.800, the NTSB and the FBI discounted eyewitness accounts of the crash of Flt. 587. Several friends of mine were directly under 587 when an explosion occured on the plane. This was followed by dramatic gyrations of the craft, break-up and eventual downing. One of these witnesses was questioned by the FBI on two occasions by phone. After relating what he had seen, the person from the FBI said, "Thank you" and hung up.
The NTSB declared it a "mechanical malfunction" less than an hour after the crash and more than two hours before an NTSB team appeared on site.
For these reasons I hold a great deal of skepticism for what we are told by the FBI and the NTSB.

[Dan(9698)]

The intact vertical stabalizer was found back in the bay. It had no sign of explosion.

An airplane cannot fly without yaw stability. It will yaw to one side and enter a spin. The airplane is not built to take cyntrifugal forces of a spin. Parts start to come off the airplane. They are thrown off in different directions. Fuel lines are ripped out and fuel spills.

It probably did have fire and explosions before it hit the ground in pieces.

[Roccus]

The friend I mentioned stationed his boat OVER the tail section to mark the spot for the NYPD Harbor G launch. He was there.
If you read my post, the explosion came before the gyrations.
The gyrations came before the break-up.
The break-up came before the downing.

[Bon mots]

I remember some years back that Airbus's would be susceptible to tailstrikes upon landing... did they ever fix that?

They also used to flip (it was a software glitch.)

[Dan(9698)]

There were no pieces of the plane in the water before the tail fin. (An explosion would have caused some parts to reach the water first and would have been evident on the fin.)

There were no parts of the plane found on the ground between where the tail was in the water and where the breakup started. (An explosion would have caused parts to be strewn along the path.)

The breakup and any fire or explosions took place after the airplane had traveled some distance after the tail fin came off.

The breakup was from a loss of control and the centrifugal forces of the spin. Just as deadly as a bomb, and caused by faulty design and the cover-up of the known problem, but not by bombers.

It was an "accident" but a very forsee-able one. (negligence for sure)

[Roccus]

I was relaying the story of eyewitnesses. In it I made no mention of other pieces of the plane. Never said anything about debris in the water before the tail. Never did I say that the explosion caused the fin to separate. Try to get your hands on a map of Jamaica Bay and you will see that the distances are not as great as you intimate.
I am interested in your source for your declaration that there were no signs of an explosion.

[Dan(9698)]

There were pictures on TV, and posted on this site that showed the attachment point of the fin, and the bottom of the fin. They showed that it just broke from being over stressed. There were no marks, streaks, deformed metal or anything like that which appeared to be from an explosion.

There were also interim reports that the wreckage did not show evidence of a bomb.

I am a pilot and I know what happens when an airplane yaws to one side. A snap roll is a horizontal spin caused by a nose up and full deflection of the rudder causing the tail to swing to one side.

That is close to what happened here. The difference is, in a snap roll the airplane flight path stays essentially level, this airplane went nose down. That would make it worse.

[COEXERJ145]

Something else all the conspiracy theorists here should know about that particular A300-600R. Several years earlier, it had suffered damage to its tail in a hard landing. That along with the design problems of the A300-600R made the aircraft a disaster waiting to happen.

This crash there is no evidence of foul play. It is common here for people without any knowledge of aviation to assume every crash must be terrorism, or an errant USN missile, but that is simply not the case. Most crashes are due to human error such as a pilot not setting the flaps for takeoff or a maintenance crew pulling a FUBAR while working on the aircraft.