[thesharkboy]

How did they finish these checks so quickly?

[Dog]

No defect in the tail.....what a surprise......NOT!

[Defiant]

On a related note, I just finished my investigation into last week's fender bender, and I have found that I was entirely without blame. The other driver stopped too closely in front of me!

[DoughtyOne]

I may be wrong, but I doubt it's that hard to check them. I didn't expect to find any trouble with them. I don't believe wind sheer but I do belive the aft rudder may have caused some problems with led to others and the final demise of the aircraft. Somewhere along the line we're either looking at design flaw or sabotage. At least IMO.

[lelio]

Can someone post what was the conclusion on what brought down TWA 800 and if TWA also found out, like AA, that those problems amazingly don't exist on their other planes?

[SSN558]

The photos of the failed rudder show composite failure at the holes that were attach points to the pins. These pictures were posted on a thread several days ago. Zoom in and notice the frayed layers or laminations in the fracture zone. It didn't shear off suddenly, there had to be some flexing of the joints to generate this type of failure.

Delamination played a critical role in the failure of this part, and the failure may have been under way for some time. Trivia: The stress riser on the edge of a round hole is 3X. So the stress at the edge of a hole is multiplied three times the load in the wider section of the part.

I usually use the one diameter rule for design. Keep the fastener or pin one hole diameter away from the edge. Going closer to the edge can only be justified by a detailed and usually finite element model. Since they did not use the one diameter rule Airbus needs to justify this design if they already haven't.

Looks like an engineering failure to me.

[Flipyaforreal]

Does anyone have a link to the picture of the fireman at the gas station where one engine landed, crouching down staring at a rather large hole blasted into the side of the engine?

[PhiKapMom]

I heard a former NTSB Investigator this morning on Paula Zahn and he said the "ONLY" ways to check these composite material tail structures was by x-ray or ultra-sound. He stated unequivocably that a visual inspection would not work with composite tail structures like they do for metal ones.

To demonstrate this fact, he held up a small notepad with a lot of pages and said this was what a composite tail structure looked like and then said it could have a crack inside of the layers and you would not be able to see it visually.

He also commented on the fact that this plane had a patch added when it came from the factory and with this kind of composite material used, it could cause problems down the road with being stronger than other parts of the structure. Also discussed the fact the plane had undergone severe turbulance in the past.

He was well versed in what he was discussing. I would like to know if AA used x-ray or ultra-sound to check these tail structures!

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

THATS BECAUSE THE GYM SHOES WERE WERE BLOWN UP WITH THE GUY WHO LIT THEM