Originally Posted by
roulishollandais
This extremely wrong and dangerous "method" has been used by the copilot on the flight AA587 in the wake turbulence over the Queens : THE RUDDER BROKE (Nov 12. 2001).
Not exactly - the vertical stabiliser separated inflight... *only* after being subjected to stresses beyond the Ultimate Design Load of the structure.
The NTSB started after some time a public enquiry, and found terrifying facts, about flying, and maintenance of airliners and cracks in the fin.
Neither cracks nor the repair to that A300's empennage had anything to do with the separation, which happened considerably beyond the Ultimate Design Load of the vertical stabiliser.
Using the rudder is not in and of itself dangerous, but rapid stop-to stop movement in a sideslip at high speed is, especially in an aircraft with wing-mounted engines and a large rudder to compensate. The problem with the AA case was that the First Officer was attempting a technique designed for the DC-9 series (small rudder, fuselage-mounted engines) on an A300 (large rudder, wing/pod-mounted engines). In the A320 sim using the rudder was better for ironing out the roll, but that was only performed after the speed had decayed past a certain point.
and the second times I showed them, I got death threats...
Forgive me for being a little sceptical, but from whom were these received?
Originally Posted by
RR_NDB
Question: When (probably) VS separated? There are differences to the AA587 fractured VS as you did see in the released pictures.
On impact with the ocean surface. Unlike AA587, the AF447 vertical stabiliser had a large chunk of fuselage attached to it.