Airbus or Boeing?
As long as plane is well maintained, pay is good and roster decent, I don't care if it's 380, 738, G550 or L-410 Turbolet.
Originally Posted by bubbers44
The vertical stab that was defective and patched out of the factory broke where the repair was done.
Never, ever let facts get into way of a good story.
Originally Posted by NTSB report on AA587, page 135
No deviations from the original design and materials specifications were found in the vertical stabilizer (including the repair to the left center lug area that was made during manufacturing) that would have contributed to the vertical stabilizer separation.
Originally Posted by NTSB report on A587, page 136
In the structural analysis of the accident condition, computational models predicted that, with increasing aerodynamic loads, the right rear lug would experience increasingly higher stresses that would eventually exceed the strength of the lug material and the right rear lug would be the first structural component to fracture
Originally Posted by NTSB report on AA587, page 135
Fracture features and damage patterns on the right forward, center, and rear lugs were consistent with overstress failure under tensile loading. The right rear lug, in particular, had fracture features that were consistent with failure in the cleavage-tension mode. Fracture features and damage patterns on the left forward, center, and rear lugs had features that were consistent with the vertical stabilizer bending to the left after separation of the lugs on the right side.
Good enough?
Originally Posted by SKS777FLYER
Also, the accident aircraft had earlier in its' life been involved in a pretty significant in flight upset. So much so that AA pulled or downloaded the flight recdorder data and submitted it to Airbus for guidance. I do not know what guidance AA received from Airbus... but Airbus DID NOT share their calculation that the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft had been subjected to ULTIMATE load factor during the upset. That came out during the discovery phase of the accident aircraft legal battle.
You can always count on lawyer to discover what accident investigator missed. Would you be so kind to provide reference to that claim of yours? I can give you something written by NTSB:
Originally Posted by NTSB report on A587, page 135
a detailed inspection of flight 587’s wreckage, including an extensive examination of the vertical stabilizer main attachment fitting fractures, revealed that each main attachment fitting had features that were consistent with overstress fracture and exhibited no evidence of fatigue features or other preexisting degradation.
Originally Posted by SKS777FLYER
I can assure that no pilot I encountered in line flying over the decades and just a very select few in the nether regions of the training and flight ops centers had the vaguest clue that at less than maneuvering speed (AA accident A300 was flying at, I believe significantly less than maneuvering speed) that it was remotely possible for a pilot to cause the vertical stabilizer of a modern jetliner to separate from the fuselage.....
That, sir, is quite appalling. Pilots of my class were certainly made aware that under no circumstances is cycling any flight control, at any speed, on any fixed-wing aircraft useful and can turn out to be lethal. It's not just tails that were in jeopardy, stories of gliders shedding wings through aircraft-pilot-coupling were used to illustrate the point. Of course, you have to be quite familiar with concepts of dynamic stability and pilot induced oscillation to appreciate the lesson. That was before they let us sit in mighty Cessna-150 and yet i find the "If you find yourself stirring the controls, give it up, you're probably fighting no one else but yourself" advice useful even when hand flying the A320. Go figure.