Originally Posted by
wrench1
I think the blades may have hit the tailboom twice after it departed especially when you line up the parts as shown in the pic. Takes a lot of energy to slice the stabilizer at the winglet like that. The inboard break looks more like impact damage.
It took zhishengji751 (#341) to point out some of the horizontal stabiliser parts (including end plates) were in plain sight in the NTSB B-roll, and wrench1 spotted them again once the wreckage was in the building. But for everyone else, here are some further views showing both endplates at the pier, with left side endplate in foreground and the right in background. Tear through left endplate seems to be from rotor striking it from outboard side as would be expected. Top of right side endplate seems undamaged. That, and orientation of slice, would tend to support the rotor(s) striking the tailboom after it had already failed:
The parts laid out on the floor (with tape measure spacing them out appropriately) show that a considerable segment of the horizontal stabiliser (and tail boom) are not yet in place. My sense from image shared by wrench1 is that main rotors sliced the horizontal stabilizer at least twice in quick succession from its underside(?):
For ROTOR BLAST (#357) there is a hint that some of the vertical stabilizer may also have been laying near the horizontal stabilizer parts at the pier. If so, it is in at least two parts (with one showing the black-gold-white paint scheme):
Here is how it looked when still intact:
