Well, the plane did hit the 747's vorticies...twice. The first time the plane enountered them, the pilot made almost no inputs to the controls and the jet flew through it.. No big deal.
The second time, however, the pilot inexplicably stomped on the rudder peddles way beyond what was required. He did either three or four “hardovers” where one rudder peddle was pushed all the way to the right, then the left, causing the plane to yaw. Each hardover made the plane yaw even more—like a pendulum—eventually overloading the vertical stab and snapping it off.
That you could snap off a tail with rudder inputs raised a lot of eyebrows, but I believe it was in the Airbus manual.
Wasnt a composite material initially blamed? Now you know why they always say, "Caution wake turbulence form departing 747" with instructions to position and hold or cleared for takeoff..
Doesn't the computer override such violent inputs by the pilot?