So, just for the sake of clarity let's agree that
this AD has nothing to do with the Al-J report. For those that are concerned about that particular film I'll reproduce an email reply I sent to the person who sent it to me:
Originally Posted by DW (email)
Hmm... I don't doubt the whistleblowers' story for a second - it pretty much ties in to the rise of the MBA generation in management and their lack of understanding with regard to anything other than the bottom line.
However the film does make a few factual errors and over-reaches in places. The two most glaring errors that I could see were the claim that the Turkish accident was an overrun (it was in fact a stall on approach), and their misuse of the old AMK test footage as a demonstration of the strength of the B707 (actually a B720) fuselage. The AMK crash sequence cannot be compared to the three NG accidents because of the yaw factor in the former, meaning that the main stress loads on the B720 fuselage were transverse rather than longitudinal on impact.
The over-reach is not with the problems presented by the whistleblowers themselves, and that part may well bode ill for the future - but the attempt to connect with the three NG accidents is at best very flimsy. I did a quick check after viewing and confirmed that the fuselage separation was not just consistent with those three accidents, but also with Kegworth (which was a B734 "Classic"). The rear failed in the same way at Manchester, and the famous Aloha 737 "convertible" failed at roughly the same place at the front - both of these were B732 (aka "Jurassic") models. This leads me to question whether those frames may just be prone to being fracture points due to the way the B737 fuselage is, and has always been, designed.
Interesting stuff though, for sure!
So - with that hopefully out of the way, let's talk horizontal stab rear spar attach pins! A subject on which I must admit, I got nuthin'.
