Airliner's death rattle led to a desperate struggle for control, black box reveals

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | 11/15/01 | Mark Riley, Herald Correspondent in New York

[Dead Dog]

This sounds like flutter to me.

[jae471]

Is it at all possible that the vertical stabilizer was failing, and that caused the violent shaking everyone on board thought was wake turbulance?

[hankbrown]

I thought they earlier said the black box showed everything was normal.

[Post Toasties]

It Airbusted.

[dead]

I thought they earlier said the black box showed everything was normal.

Huh? Who’s “they”? Are you aware that this black box came from a plane that crashed? Do many pilots consider their plane falling apart in flight "normal"?

[hankbrown]

I was commenting about this statement from "they" in an earlier post: "Authorities said the voice recorder, which was found soon after the Monday crash, didn't indicate any problems aboard the airliner." Seems odd that at first "they" said it did not indicate any problems and now it is chilling and shows desperate struggle.

[Cicero]

There are some troubling inconsistencies, such as the earlier insistence that the cockpit crew said nothing before the disaster, but maybe the reason is that what they said was not transmitted over the radio to the control tower, but was picked up by the cockpit voice recorder. Or as it says, the controllers didn't catch it but a nearby pilot did.

I'm no expert on any of this, but I find this explanation for the crash plausible. I suspect that in certain conditions jet streams persist longer than usual, and it's been said that the jet stream from a 747 is more dangerous than from a smaller plane. I also suspect that the 2 minute interval may be cutting things a bit short, because if they extended it busy airports would have to cut back on the number of flights. In other words, maybe 2 minutes is enough 99.999% of the time, but there's that occasional instance when the jet stream persists longer than usual.

What I do know about turbulence and vibration is that they are very complicated, hard to analyze and predict. My cousin, a British engineer, made destructive turbine vibration his specialty; he solved the problem many years ago having to do with Rolls Royce jet engines on the Lockheed Electra which had caused several catastrophic failures.

[Clara Lou]

I heard that the plane that took of ahead of this crashed airliner took off 8 minutes earlier. I heard that on FOX yesterday. If that's accurate, then turbulence due to the the first plane's takeoff would not be a factor.
Also, could the rattling heard twice on the voice recorder be the tail section coming loose? Seems to me that would cause vibration. If the tail section just came off, then it surely must be sabotage.

[freddy]

"THEY" must continue to 'SPIN' the theory that the problem was mechanical...

"THEY" have the media convinced it was a mechanical problem...
Not any of the media I have heard of has asked the point blank question...'How could the plane break up into 4 pieces with only 1 mechanical failure..??'...
or...'You mean there were 4 major mechanical failures all in the time frame of 1 minute..??'

Stay tuned and hang on for the SPIN of your life..!!!

[FreeTally]

And the misinformation continues.......

[Wright is right!]

"There are some troubling inconsistencies, such as the earlier insistence that the cockpit crew said nothing before the disaster, but maybe the reason is that what they said was not transmitted over the radio to the control tower, but was picked up by the cockpit voice recorder."

What the NTSB had said earlier was that there was no indication of abnormality until the final seconds of the flight (from the CVR). This IS consistent with the information released yesterday, which details the final seconds of the flight.

As to wake turbulence - the JAL 747 was a good 8 miles ahead of AA587, plenty of spacing for dissipation of wake turbulence in a 5 mph crisp breeze. You want to see close "heavy" spacing? Park at the GA terminal on the south side of LAX and watch the heavies (AC +350,000 GW) arrive and depart with under 2 mi. separation. Or go to the 9th floor lobby of the Airport Hilton across the I-70 fwy from STL in Saint Louis and watch heavies depart, then other a/c departing less than 3 miles in trail. Happens every day at every airport across the land where you have heavies departing.

AA587 is NOT a wake turbulence incident.

Michael

[ChemistCat]

That vertical stabilizer came off SO cleanly I can't help but think that it just flat out wasn't attached properly. I mean, it doesn't look as if anything RIPPED, not even around rivets. If it wasn't attached right, any turbulence would have gotten it.

You know, 37 seconds doesn't seem like so very long. I remember reading that Robert and Virginia Heinlein liked to fly a lot, in part because if something should happen it would be quick and neither would be left widowed. It took 100 minutes for those trapped in the WTC to meet their ends. I know these folks had many plans that will now be left unfinished, but I will not be scared to fly because of the possibility of a death like theirs. My Mother-in-law's ovarian cancer is back after a 5 year remission--she is facing chemo again, and it always surprises me that she is terrified of flying when she can handle the months-long misery of chemotherapy.

[Loopy]

Mr. Black, NTSB head of the investigation said yesterday on GMA, and I heard him myself, that the Voice recording depicted nothing out of the ordinary. An incredibly stupid statement in retrospect.

[null and void]

You know, 37 seconds doesn't seem like so very long.

It can when it's YOUR 37 seconds...

[Avi8tor]

I think the wake turbulence scenario is absurd.

Wake turbulence references wingtip vortices generated at the tip of the wings by an aircraft. The heavier and slower the aircraft, the more pronounced the vortices. So it sounds like a likely culprit, right?

No, and here's why. The vortices are not generated until the aircraft leaves the ground, that is, when the wings are supporting the weight of the airplane. Once generated, they sink at a rate of roughly 1000 ft. per second. They don’t just linger there in the airspace once occupied by the generating craft -- they descend.

With a separation of over two minutes, the wing-tip vortices of the departing JAL 747 would have been over 2000 ft lower than its flight path. The A-300 has both a shorter takeoff roll and a higher rate of climb than the 747. This means that even if the two aircraft took off within seconds of one another, the AA flight would have lifted off at a point on the runway before the 747 began to generate vortices and would have remained on a flight path higher than that of the previous airplane.

Since vortices descend, and do not climb, it would be necessary for the AA flight to be below the flight path of the proceeding 747 to encounter it's wake; a very unlikely situation.

In addition, there was a good breeze that day at JFK. (Evidence - the smoke from the fires) Vortices move through the column of air that they are in. At this point in an airplanes flight, they are on a predetermined departure procedure flying over ground references that do not move (waypoints, navaids, etc). To encounter the wake turbulence of the 747 the AA flight would need to be 2000 ft. low and off-course, just the right amount in the direction of the wind.

[Solson]

No way this was wake turbulence. Something caused failure and loss of the tail section of the aircraft. The A300 had a problem with corrosion in the rear bulkhead earlier this year in Japan.

So, something happens which causes the tail section of the aircraft to fall off. Corrosion makes sense. So does tampering. Interesting to see where this leads. the AC in question had an 'a-check' the day prior with no problems found....

[dead]

Put no credence in unattributed quotes from "authorities." It is absolutely absurd that the pilots would be unaware that there was some sort of problem with their airliner.

These journalists make half this stuff up, or interview unnamed "authorities" who know nothing, just to get a quote.

It looks like it was likely accidental from what we know so far, but we don't know everything yet. Something went seriously wrong with this aircraft very quickly. The pilot certainly didn't suspect a bomb, but sabotage is also a possibility.

[kjam22]

This whole event reminds me of the time an enemy took the lug nuts off of my 69 Chevelle. I guess you could have called that "mechanical failure" when the vibration sheared the bolts and the wheel came off.