AMR 587 Airbus Crash (merged)

[Shore Guy]

During the investigation of this accident much has been made of the design, material, and construction of the vertical stab on the A-300. We now all are aware that Part 25 certification does not cover the loads associated with a rudder reversal…….but…….I, and many other folks have wondered………would the fin have separated on the Boeing equivalent?

For you engineering types, inquiring minds would like to know.

[Pontious]

Flight Safety.

With regard to your comments concerning 'a really good lawyer...', I wouldn't be so sure. If anything it was AA's training that was under the spotlight after the independant analysts provided data that showed the aircraft could take more punishment than it was designed to take by quite a significant margin.

Shore Guy.

I've recently trained to fly Airbuses after 4000+ hours on Med/Heavy Boeings. The instructors on my previous types were Boeing trained and one was a former Heavy Jet Test Pilot. They stressed from very early in the training course the use and misuse of the rudder at high speed and high altitude and we were taught that full rudder reversals were to be avoided.
Something that was beaten into me again when I re-trained to fly the Airbus.
One of my instructors was a former Airbus Test Pilot and A300/A310 development pilot. According to him, Airbus had raised concerns with AA Training prior to AA587. After trawling the 'net and watching the documentry on BBC World, it is readily apparent that this is anything but an 'open and shut case'.


The aircraft proved it could absorb more punishment than it was designed and certified to encounter to such an extent that the actual figures of what the aircraft endured leading up to the failiure surprised the manufacturer. Witnessing the Chief of AA's A300 Fleet Training' rudder technique coupled with AA's own track record of 'overstressed' rudders - almost 10% of such a small fleet (and those were the FAA's own figures) it didn't look good for AA's A300 Training Department.

I, personally, think the outcome is far from 'cut and dried'.
If it WAS the aircraft then how come airlines such as AF,LH,IB,AI,PIA...the numerous Chinese and Japanese operators haven't had a problem? But AA with a fleet of 30 something have had multiple problems? I think we'll let the investigation decide.

[Wino]

from Pontious

If it WAS the aircraft then how come airlines such as AF,LH,IB,AI,PIA...the numerous Chinese and Japanese operators haven't had a problem? But AA with a fleet of 30 something have had multiple problems? I think we'll let the investigation decide.

Sorry but since Airbus flat out refused to provide all that data to the NTSB and the APA you can't make that claim. THe only fleets we were able to look out turned out to be ones under the jurisdiction of the FAA. I wonder why that was?

Had you trained to fly Airbus BEFORE the 587 crash I sincerely doubt you would have received all that attention. There is VERY little turn over on the fleet and those that went through training from Toulouse when the aircraft were new and training was done by Airbus say exactly the same thing.

The fact that they emphasize it now just proves that there is an issue specific to the aircraft that they are correcting with training. (closing the barn door after the aircraft left). BTW. Been through training recently in Miami at AIRBUS again on the 320. No such emphasis for that aircraft....

Sorry dude.

Cheers
Wino

[Flight Safety]

Pontious, you said:

I've recently trained to fly Airbuses after 4000+ hours on Med/Heavy Boeings. The instructors on my previous types were Boeing trained and one was a former Heavy Jet Test Pilot. They stressed from very early in the training course the use and misuse of the rudder at high speed and high altitude and we were taught that full rudder reversals were to be avoided.

You are extremely correct, the rudder should never be abused at high speeds, and full rudder reversals should (indeed must) be avoided.

However I doubt seriously that this pilot, who obviously used the rudder to assist the fully deflected ailerons in rolling the aircraft level, ever intended to move the rudder to full deflection. Furthermore, I doubt seriously that he even knew the rudder was fully deflected, perhaps thinking the larger than expected heading changes were caused by the wake turbulance rather than a fully deflecting rudder.

Since all if this happened in the space of a few seconds, the pilot probably never realised that he was actually performing a full rudder reversal. A 25% deflected rudder reversal for example would be no big deal, well within the Part 25 structural limits for the fin. However, an unintentional full rudder reversal is a completely different matter.

I'm just about certain that this pilot never knew that he was performing full rudder reversals, and I'm pretty sure he didn't know about the design limitations of the rudder limiting system on this aircraft.

[747FOCAL]

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?B...&PAG=461&rfi=9

[Jackonicko]

Wino,

In the interests of helping you to prove that you're not a xenophobic, trouble making, stirring, anti-Airbus idiot, perhaps you'd like to publicly agree with the following:

"Had TWA NEVER bought Boeing there would have been no crash in Long Island on July 17, 1996. That is a FACT.... So because TWA bought an a Boeing product hundreds of people died."

It's no more inane than what you wrote about Airbus, and rather more people have been killed as a result of Boeing fuel tank explosions, 737 rudder hardovers, etc. than as a result of Airbus fin failures....

Hope that helps.

[Wino]

Jackonito.

I would say instead it is you and the others that have some perverse Hard on for Sten Molin and Ed States. But you can't pin it on ONE crew when the same problem has been run into by other crews.

Furthermore because American has very rigid standardization they perform uniformly across their fleets in their operations of aircraft, yet this problem has ONLY manifest itself in one extremely small subfleet.

So this particular problem is specific to the A300600R in the cofiguration ordered by American, which is a unique and specific type not EXACTLY ordered by any other airline. It was however manufactered by Airbus. It is the manufacturers responsibility to release a safe product complete with accurate training.

I do not disagree that more people have died in boeing aircraft. But FAR more boeing aircraft are flying around the world than Airbus so that is not nearly a fair comparison. While I have provided an Apples to Apples comparison.



Cheers
Wino

[faheel]

aw c'mon wino are you saying that when american ordered the A300-600 they specified either a weaker fin attachment or a rudder that could move thru a greater range?

When airlines order "different" a/c from manufactures that is definately not an option.

The rudder /fin exceeded the design and certified load thats why it parted company with the rest of the a/c, unfortunately caused by a combination of pilot input and wake turbulence.

Thats all there is to it.

[ferrydude]

American Airlines, Airbus Position for Flight 587 Final Hearing
Aviation Week & Space Technology
10/25/2004, page 45


Michael A. Dornheim
Los Angeles

Frances Fiorino
Washington



Three-year-long probe ends: American Airlines and Airbus position for final Flight 587 hearing


NTSB Wraps Up AA587

American Airlines and Airbus will soon engage in their final Flight 587 showdown.

The NTSB meets this week in Washington for the final hearing that will determine the probable cause of the Nov. 12, 2001, accident, in which the vertical tail assembly separated from an American Airlines Airbus A300-600 shortly after takeoff from New York JFK International Airport. The crash killed 260 people on board and five on the ground. It was Airbus' first accident in the U.S.

There is much speculation on what the board will deem probable cause--pilot error, lapses in airline training and nonsharing of safety data by the aircraft manufacturer.

The consensus is that the copilot applied the rudder from stop to stop in what may have been pilot-induced oscillations. The PIOs (also called aircraft-pilot coupling, or APC) in turn caused a large sideslip plus rudder deflection that overloaded the tail fin and ultimately resulted in the inflight structural failure.

What led to the PIOs is at the heart of the hearing. Airbus, in its submission to the NTSB on probable cause, states the pilot's rudder pedal inputs were conditioned by American's Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program (AAMP), which "advocated aggressive use of rudder for roll control" and reinforced by negative training in simulators.

On the other hand, American's submission says the cause was "the onset of a design-induced, adverse APC event." American's A300 fleet captain-flight operations, Delvin Young, said the pilot was "part of the process, not the cause" of the accident. American believes the broader issue for the board is examination of system safety issues.

American is concerned that the NTSB final hearing might not adequately weigh prior instances involving the A300-600 and A310 in which fin limit loads were exceeded through rudder overcontrol or Airbus' apparent failure to inform operators and regulators about the events. Airbus has claimed it informed American about one such event--a May 1997 inflight upset incident involving American Flight 903 near Miami.

Airbus has stressed that the NTSB should scrutinize American's training procedures. Airbus maintains it warned airlines not to use rudder for roll control--unless as a last resort--in the Upset Recovery Training Aid, a manual generated by both Airbus and Boeing and first released in 1998.

American claims Airbus never informed it about use of rudder for roll control. Further, Airbus has argued that AAMP training emphasized use of rudder for roll control purposes in classroom lectures, in written material and in the simulator. This encouraged pilots to make the kind of motions the Flight 587 pilot made in response to wake encounters with a Boeing 747-400 that had departed prior to the A300-600.

Airbus claims that training emphasis on use of rudder for roll control was unfavorable for several reasons. First, the only way roll control through use of rudder is achieved is to develop a sideslip and the aircraft will roll in response. However, as there's a long delay between control input and response, when the aircraft responds, it does so with alacrity. Secondly, the only experience Flight 587's pilot had with upset recovery had been in the simulator--which likely had given him false expectations of how an airplane in flight would respond to control inputs.


NTSB graph shows that the rudder limiter on the A300-600 makes the pedal more sensitive at higher speeds. At the 250 kt. of the Flight 587 accident, it is six times more sensitive than its A300B2/B4 predecessor.

Airbus said another critical training issue is that American made a simulator modification which had not been cleared with either Airbus or the FAA. The modification was such that in order to teach the pilot to use rudder in a simulated upset due to wake vortex encounters, the instructor would push a button in the simulator cab to stop all roll control. A rolling moment was then induced, and when the aircraft reached a large bank angle, it washed back at a gradual rate to be control-effective. Airbus is saying the modification, in effect, forced pilots to make full control inputs on the roll and yaw axes.

IN ADDITION, Airbus might argue that even American's own staff voiced concerns about upset training. Airbus points to a letter from Paul Railsback, American's managing director of flight operations-technical, at the time of the Flight 903 event. Addressing American's vice president of flight ops, Railsback states his "grave concerns about some flawed aerodynamic theory and flying techniques that have been presented in AAMP . . . [that] I believe . . . are validated by the recent AA903 accident. Pilots are told to use rudder as the primary means of roll control in unusual attitude recoveries. This is not only wrong, it is exceptionally dangerous. . . . American Airlines is at grave risk of a catastrophic upset."

American is also pointing to the NTSB's findings in a prior accident involving an ATR 72 turboprop operated by Simmons Airlines/American Eagle that crashed after wing icing behind the deice boots caused unstable aileron forces of an estimated 60 lb. snatching the control away from neutral. The Flight 4184 accident occurred near Roselawn, Ind., in October 1994, and earlier incidents and accidents had made the problem known within ATR (AW&ST July 15, 1996, p. 41).

THE BOARD concluded that a contributing factor was ATR's inadequate response to continuing icing roll upsets and failure to provide procedures for these conditions. Factors also include the French DGAC certification authority's failing to ensure ATR 72 airworthiness in icing conditions, and failing to give the FAA timely information developed from previous ATR incidents and accidents in icing. The crew and airline were not mentioned as a probable cause or contributing factor.

American argues that Airbus knew that the A300-600 and A310 were prone to rudder overcontrolling from three or four prior incidents dating back to at least 1991 that were presented in NTSB testimony (AW&ST Nov. 25, 2002, p. 44).

Calculations showed that these rudder motions overloaded the fin beyond limit load in several cases, and beyond ultimate load (1.5 times limit load) in at least two instances--a point at which the fin might be expected to break off. One of those ultimate load violations was on American's Flight 903 in May 1997 and the other was on an Interflug A310 in 1991. Other cases include an Air France Flight 825 incident in December 1999 on an A310 where limit load was exceeded.

A key document, American says, is a June 19, 1997, Airbus internal memorandum stating that in Flight 903's "rear fuselage, fin and empennage the ultimate design loads may have been exceeded." This knowledge did not come to the NTSB or American until the document was revealed after the Flight 587 accident more than four years later.

"With Interflug, you could say it was a one-off," says Bruce Hicks, an American spokesman. "But with 903 you have to connect the dots, and Air France 825 clinched it."

American claims Airbus knew of overloads but did not inform operators or authorities in sufficiently specific language that would catch their attention, nor did the manufacturer convey data about the series of rudder overcontrol incidents on the A300-600 and A310.

An independent study requested as part of the NTSB Flight 587 investigation showed that at higher speeds, where pilots rarely use the pedals, the rudder of these two types is 3.2-10 times more sensitive (in terms of deflection per incremental force) than other transports, with a breakout force several times larger than the incremental force for full deflection (see graph, p. 45). An NTSB poll of Boeing, Douglas and Airbus histories showed that no other type had this history of fin overload.

By analogy with the ATR 72 accident, American argues that it and its copilot should not be a probable cause of the Flight 587 crash because the A300-600 has a unique propensity to rudder PIO and fin overloads at the higher speeds of the accident, and that Airbus did not disclose these characteristics to operators.

A distinction between the Roselawn case and Flight 587 is that the ATR 72 aileron snatch happened by itself, whereas the Flight 587 rudder oscillation started with the copilot applying full right rudder for little apparent reason. Investigators have concluded that the aircraft was crossing the wake of a preceding Boeing 747 at that point, but the flight data recorder (FDR) shows only about 2 deg. of roll increase, from 23 to 25 deg. The FDR samples roll angle only once per second, and some roll acceleration felt by the crew may be missed--but the net result is just a small blip in roll. The copilot had previously been chastised by another captain for excessive rudder usage while crossing a mild wake, apparently in response to his interpretation of upset recovery training given by American.

"Let's say the copilot was way too aggressive and should have waited to see if the aileron worked," Hicks says. "Still, pushing the rudder a small amount shouldn't kill all those people." The initial push is believed to have started the PIO, which took off the tail. "Where in pilot training does it say you can't use rudder to assist roll? Where does it say to 'let go of the controls,' as Airbus suggested in the hearing? You can't say he used 'too much' rudder because it's so sensitive it's an on-off system. Certification requirements say it shouldn't have caused an immediate PIO. You can't have flight controls so unforgiving that one pulse gives a PIO that results in the tail coming off in 6.5 sec."

AS FOR THE ISSUE of rudder sensitivity, Airbus claims that in 16 million flight hours, there have only been two upset events, both involving American Airlines, and both involving large amplitude rudder inputs--Flights 587 and 903. American points to other cases: Air France 825 in 1999 and Interflug Flight 103 in 1991. Airbus has also pointed out that it came to light in previous Flight 587 testimony that First Officer Sten Molin had a history of using excessive rudder and had, in the case of Flight 587, exerted a force of 140 lb. on the initial rudder input.

"The NTSB may say the copilot started the oscillation so it's the probable cause," Hicks says. "Yes, the copilot's use of rudder is a factor, but was it wrong? Not based on his training, widespread misconceptions about maneuvering speed, and how we thought the flight controls worked.

"I think hiding knowledge is a cause--with that knowledge we have no accident. Had what happened in Flight 903, Interflug and Air France Flight 825 been known, Flight 587 wouldn't have happened. If we have 587 again today then it's the pilots' fault because they are now trained. But not back then."

[Rosbif]

Are they saying that above certain speeds, any force which would be required to "breakout" (ie use) the rudder would also be enough to hurt the tail?
If this the case, you might as well "lock out" the rudder above certain speeds.

[Wino]

Actually what they are saying is that above a certain speed (around 230 kts) that the force required to get the rudder moving is virtually identical to the force required to get it to the full stop.

So once you clean the aircraft up the rudders aren't controlled in the conventional sense. You should consider the rudder pedals full left and right toggle switches. Something that would guarantee an overcontrol should you suddenly need them in the heat of battle (which is something you might go your entire career without needing, like an engine failure, but that one time you need it, it will let you down)

Cheers
Wino

[Rosbif]

So you agree with me then. The rudder can't be used with any degree of precision or finesse. If your boot is on it hard enough to breakaway, then you could also hurt the tail by using it.
It sounds a bit like trying to break a rusty nut free with a wrench. You are pulling harder and harder, until ****xyz. Skinned knuckles.

[Wino]

Yes, I agree with you.

It is a serious design shortfall of the aircraft that could have been overcome by proper notification from Airbus that was not carried out.

Better yet would be conversion back to the original A300B4 rudder load limiter system, but that would not be so simple.


Small fleet with a lot of incidents and an accident related to this problem. A problem unique to the A300600.

If you have that once in a career reaon to use the rudder when the aircraft is going faster (like crossing a 747s wake turbulence at a distance below the minimum safe distance) you are walking into a killer trap laid there by a poor design, which will lead to a POI.

And as I stated, it wasn't an American Airlines only problem. A couple of European airlines have stumbled across the trap as well.

Cheers
Wino

[ORAC]

Washington Post: Pilot, Rudder May Share Blame for Airbus Crash

An American Airlines pilot is likely to be blamed by government investigators for causing the crash of Flight 587, which plunged into a Queens neighborhood on Nov. 12, 2001, killing all on board and five people on the ground, according to sources familiar with the probe, but aircraft design is also likely to be cited as a contributing factor.......

[TheShadow]

A compilation of A300 rudder events from various sources (possibly incomplete)

A300 rudder events

= 345kb Word Document

[epreye]

Link to AP report on NTSB findings here.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...ntsb_flight587

[Pontious]

Perhaps with the outcome of the NTSB report, we can now put this one to bed before it dissolves into a US vs. EU bun fight. Heart felt sympathies and condolonces to all.

[ironbutt57]

"That's all there is to it"...'cept you left out the part that the pilot acted in accordance with his training, and that training may have been based on inaccurate information from airbus...that's a bit more to it....

[Ptkay]

Va, or I missed something...

I am just a simple PPL pilot, just completed my training,
and my ground school, but I really don't understand something.

One of the most important (and basic) things thought to me was
the Va speed (on any aircraft, the highest speed for "brutal steering").

On every plane (single piston or 4 jet) there must be in the
manual a clear declaration of the Va.

So, what is the Va for A300-600 ?

Is it stated clearly in AOM ?

If so, what is all this disscusion about ?

If the co-pilot applies full ruder above the Va,
he's to be blamed without daubt for the crash,
if below of the Va, that's the manufacturer's fault.

Fullstop.


PTKay

[Captain104]

Sorry,you missed more than something.

Cpt. Evey in Washington just said loud and convincing that it was a misconception to assume that rudder reversals (stomping the rudder without any reason) 5 times full right and full left below Va is within the envelope.

regards

read http://www.ntsb.gov/events/2001/AA587/presentations.htm
last item Operations
and
follow hearing in Washington in 35 Min. http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/aviation.htm