Come on guys, he wasnt going that fast, wasn't near VMO. If a plane comes apart at slow speeds with a rudder imput, not talkin elevator here, then I think that plane might need to be flight tested. What about windshear, wake turbulence, flying over smoke stacks, through the tops of some small cell, all could impose way more loads then just shoving the rudder over......
Is it possible a pilot could yank and bank a plane apart, sure, but with the captain sitting right next to him? On take off?
Funny no one is talking about composites, inability to test them at the time, ect.
But it was more than just a rudder over, ssg. It was repeated contrary motions, in a sideslip, following a wake turbulence event. I don't think anyone would risk flight testing that situation knowing what we now know about it.
If the jury was out on composites, and it was obvious that Airbus made a mistake in using them, there's no way that Boeing would be risking their future by building their next big project completely out of them - at least, one would hope not.
It's in the nature of people to defend their own in such situations, and if the findings were as cut and dried as blaming the pilot for overcontrolling then I could understand the desire to dig deeper. But it's not that cut and dried, is it? There was a training culture that was too all-encompassing when it came to the type being flown - contributory cause number one. There was a bulletin that was disregarded regarding use of rudder in upset recovery - contributory cause number two. There was a pilot who, while doing as he was apparently trained, overcontrolled the aircraft and overloaded the tail - contributory cause number three. No-one is (or more precisely should be) blaming Sten Molin for what he did, which was by most accounts exactly what he was told to do. I hate to say never, but I doubt that the captain was monitoring his rudder inputs at the time - there simply wasn't the time to figure such things out. The system failed the people on that aircraft and the system has since been changed. There are those that want to blame Airbus and there are even those that insist that there was an act of terror involved. None of this is helping our skies be safer.