Desk-Pilot...
Your comments seems to illustrate you did not understand some of the points being made.
1. <<was surprised to learn that full rudder deflection could cause loss of a tail.>>
A single deflection at any stage cannot - the rudder limiting system keeps the load below a limit - ans the design strength is 1.5x that limit.
What can lost the fin is a full deflection held long enough to reach a stable yaw angle, and then the rudder reversed to full deflection the other way - and that did appear to happen (maybe more than once) here.
As was stated last night - it was felt initially the fin was to blame. However, further study showed the the reversal of rudder exceeded the "ultimate design strength", and hey presto, as advertised it failed. A Boeing Fin is designed to exactly the same certification requirements, and likely would also fail - hence the notices that went out after this from all manufacturers.
2. <<and one which ought to be addressed>>
Fine - we'll build all airliners out of 1" Stainless Steel. Trouble is it would cost 10x the ticket price - attractive idea now?
3. <<the question is whether they survived because they were flying a conventionally constructed tailplance!>>
Again - you missed the whole (eventual) point of the program. It was shown that the load exceeded the ultimate design strength as required for certification. Make your tailplane out of anything you want - if the load exceeds its ultimate strength it breaks (Boeings also do this funnily enough).
What they did not labour on, or make totally clear, was they method used for limiting rudder deflection on the A300-600. If one is going to use the rudder for anything other than the landing and takeoff phases, then the A300-600 system is, IMHO, "not ideal". This came back to the other point of the program was that Airbus' ideas and AA's ideas of rudders (if the training video was still AA policy) were very different...
NoD
Wino
<<As to AA;s training. They never advocated anything other than cooridinated rudder. There was a long discussion about crossover speed and high angle of attack and rudder inputs (VERY RELEVENT to loss of control crashes in the 737) but nobody was advocating stomping rudders.
The airplane is a trap for a Pilot induced oscilation in the yaw access at certain speeds.>>
I think you've hit the nail on the head. Given the strange rudder limiting system on the A300-600, use of measured / co-ordinated rudder at anything other than low speed is very hard to achieve, hence my comment that AA and Airbus' ideas were so different that an accident such as this was somewhat inevitable?
From Horizon last night, it seems a PIO was building up, if the AoB's shown were correct.... Very unusal for a wake encounter to repeatedly roll the aircraft from one side to another - my experiences are you generally get just rough air / a jolt, or if you get stuck in a vortex for a bit, a rolling moment (sometimes needing lots of aileron to stop the roll - no rush to get back level) in one direction.
Can all we just remember the purpose of accident investiagtion - it is not to allocate blame, but to prevent a repetition.
NoD