Originally Posted by
Organfreak
Or not. Perhaps they could not take the risk, no matter how small. Perhaps there wasn't the funding. Your 'logic' is unimpressive.
I addressed that here:
Originally Posted by DW
That they did not perform the latter action (despite being willing in the past to risk wake turbulence encounters in a 737 during the UA535/USAir427 investigations and spray an ATR72 with frozen liquid in-flight)...
Bear in mind that those tests on the 737 were performed when there was a very real prospect that the rudder hardovers were caused by a wake turbulence encounter, and that the ATR wing's problems with ice were well-known. Those are some pretty big risks right there, and the NTSB performed them for real (with FAA/NASA assistance) without flinching.
As for funding, in 2001 the US government was still running Clinton's surplus.
@Lyman:
There was no need to test that the A300-600 V/S could fail if Ultimate design load was exceeded - that was a given. In order to practically test the theory that a metal-metal attachment could have survived those loads would have required testing on another type. My guess is that the NTSB crunched the numbers and found that it would have made no difference.
Regarding the B-52, Turbine D put it quite succinctly:
Originally Posted by
Turbine D
This particular aircraft in the video was a test aircraft examining structural integrity limits. Other in service aircraft suffered from this problem from time to time and some did not fly, but crashed. Turbulence and buffeting were the causes, two aircraft in 1963 lost fins, one in 1964 lost the entire tail, all crashed.
The famous incident where the V/S was practically lost involved a crew of test pilots who were drilled to counteract a failure of that type and magnitude. Regular military pilots weren't so fortunate in the same situation. The JAL123 747SR had a similar vestigial part of the V/S remaining, but the loss of hydraulics still led the aircraft to crash. The B-52 is not an airliner.
I reckon you'd find that the airspeed-based rudder authority limits were very close when comparing the A300 and the B767. Variable-stop or not, I don't think it would have made a lot of difference whne putting bootfuls in like the AA587 F/O did.