I have not so far seen any discussion of flutter in this accident, a mode that seems to absorb a fair bit of attention in the design and test of airframes.
The following email was forwarded to me which seems to resonate, so to speak, with the sequence of events.
Howdy,
Re: the New York 11-12-2001 Airbus crash.
I found this photo of the vertical stabilizer's failed composite
Attachment blades or webs. The bolts that attached the composite vertical stabilizer to the fuselage, remain properly attached. Clearly, the failure is a delamination of the composite vertical tail above the points of attachment to the fuselage.
There are reasons (despite the weight savings) why Douglas Aircraft and Boeing have never used composites this way - and you're looking at one. As the delamination of the composite progressed, the entire 37-ft. tall vertical tail would have fluttered briefly & violently. That would explain why both engines were literally shaken off the airplane. (This is particularly remarkable, because unlike Douglas and Boeing, Airbus has bragged of purposely designing their engine mounting pylons to keep the engines in place no matter what!) One wing tip was found several blocks away from the main wreckage.
BTW, you'll be hearing a lot about an encounter with wake turbulence. That is a red herring. Wake turbulence can make it difficult - maybe even impossible to control the airplane - but no amount of wake turbulence can remove the vertical tail at such low flight speeds unless there is a pre-existing structural fault.
What is flutter? This morning, I got an email from a friend who is the Director of Structural Engineering of a major American aircraft maker. He described a chilling picture: "Flutter modes often have an explosively quick onset, rising from nothing to catastrophic in the blink of an eye.
Furthermore, the shaking can happen so fast that, despite the large (huge) deflections involved, an observer on the ground might not see it. It's just a blur. The people in the back of the airplane would have been shaken senseless and worse as the seats tore lose and everything was homogenized back there; but it was all over a few seconds later."
The design weakness can and will be fixed on other Airbuses. If not, there are plenty of nice Boeing jetliners mothballed in the Mojave Desert, that can trade places with the Airbuses. In the meantime, I'm not riding Airbus.
The email might sound a little US v European product but IMHO does raise an interesting point which should not be lost in that argument.
BTW I am Australian so I don't have any commercial or national agenda beyond riding safely in whoevers product.
Blacksheep
Hi long time no seeum.
Don't think the Harrier/AV8 has any problems, it's had the best from both worlds methinks.
Which is the way it should be with passenger airframes.