.. Considering the “Rudder Limit Reached” was the first fault reported by the ACARS, I would guess that the vertical stabilizer separated right after that, with the aircraft entering a flat spin. A flat spin could explain the resulting speed errors. Remember the Rock-Away crash, the first thing they found/recovered was the intact vertical stab with the rudder attached, the same as in this instance. They blamed that on the copilot inducing rudder movement in response to wake turbulence. I submit that the Airbus FBW system is capable of “uncommanded” full rudder movement resulting in structural failure of the vertical stabilizer attach points
In the report, the Rudder Limit error comes after a bunch of auto-pilot and navigation stuff. It sounds like the display and instrumentation took a dump before the rudder stuff. And two very odd warnings about two hours before the crash. Keep in mind, they rolled over into the next day on the flight.
“Twenty-six maintenance messages relative to flight AF447 were received. Twenty-four of
them were received on 1st June between 2 h 10 and 2 h 15.”
“The first two messages were received the day before at 22 h 45. These were a class 2 fault message and a related MAINTENANCE STATUS TOILET cockpit effect message. The fault message, “LAV CONFIGURATION” (ATA 383100, source VSC*, HARD) represented a toilet configuration difference between the airplane and that included in one of the associated systems. “
What the heck is all this about? Probably nothing, but still...
Any ideas?