To whom it may concern:
October 8, 2004
U.S. BUSINESS NEWS
Airbus May Not Have Pressed
Plane-Tail Safety Warnings
By ANDY PASZTOR
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
With pilot error expected to be cited as the primary reason for the 2001 crash
of an American Airlines Airbus A300 jetliner, newly reviewed documents
underscore that Airbus engineers years before realized but failed to explicitly
warn pilots or airlines about the potential for such a catastrophic accident.
The new information is likely to renew debate about how much of the cause can be assigned to the American
crew versus the design of the jet's tail, and also whether Airbus, an arm of European Aeronautic Defense &
Space Co., ought to be faulted for what critics allege were shortcomings in raising red flags about possible
hazards.
The National Transportation Safety Board is poised to conclude that the plane's cockpit crew inadvertently
created forces that ripped off the tail and killed 265 people by swinging the rudder rapidly from side to side
during a climb after takeoff. The board is expected to discuss additional questions about design issues and
regulatory approval of the A300 when it holds a public hearing later this month.
Testimony and documents already have revealed that Airbus had warned about the matter, but many of the
warnings were overlooked and the aircraft maker itself failed to push the issue.
The latest internal Airbus
documents shed more light on what the plane maker knew, and how concerned some of its own engineers
appeared to be, about a 1997 incident that didn't result in a crash but seriously stressed the tail of a different
American Airlines A300 aircraft over South Florida.
Airbus strongly disputes that the internal memorandum -- which surfaced in litigation over the 2001 crash --
indicates the company knew more about the dangers than it disclosed at the time, or that it subsequently
failed to promptly or fully advise the airline about the matter.
John Lauber, the top safety official for Airbus
in the U.S., has said that "aggressive use of the rudder" by American pilots in 1997 was "analyzed
preliminarily" by the company and "caused us concern about possible damage in the tail section."
An Airbus spokesman said yesterday that the company "pressed hard" for American, a unit of AMR Corp.,
to take the specific plane out of service for an inspection. The company maintains that it wasn't until 2002
that it was able to use updated techniques to conclude that the stresses on the tail of the plane in the 1997
incident exceeded its "ultimate" design limit -- an all-important limit 50% above the highest stresses any part
is supposed to undergo in flight.
The June 16, 1997, memo warned after the South Florida incident that, based on data from previous flight
tests and simulators, "rudder movement from left limit to right limit will produce [structural] loads" on the
rear of the A300 exceeding the "ultimate design load" the parts were expected to withstand. The memo
circulated among Airbus engineers seems to include a more-explicit and definitive warning about the
potential for structural failure than other Airbus documents examined by investigators.
When Airbus participated in the safety board's investigation of the 1997 incident, it told the board that pilots
"using too much rudder" to recover from an upset "can lead to structural loads that exceed the design strength
of the fin and other associated airframe components." But recently, current and former board investigators
have told industry representatives that those conclusions weren't highlighted by Airbus and their full significane it was missed ,according to ailine and pilots-union officials.
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10/11/2004
http://online.wsj.com/article_print/...1307439650,00.