clandestino

then tell me why, after taking over 10 different licensing exams with the FAA that this was never mentioned in 33 years of flying...until after the fact of course?

tell me why the A300 didn't have a placcard saying not to cycle the rudder back and forth?

sorry pal, a plane that will come apart with any control movement needs either a better limiter or a placcard. I've flown planes with both.

all the paperwork in the world after the fact means nothing...lawyers covering their respective company's a$%$


as to the bradley bit...that was an interesting near crash...have you flown into or out of BDL?

Let us not forget - there was a tumultuous thread on this board a few months ago regarding whether one should cross the Atlantic Ocean after a massive gear retraction problem.....

Maybe I'm not following, but is it correct to say that the B757 does not have Transformer Rectifier Units to provide DC power? All DC comes from the batts which have to be constantly charged to keep up? Just wondering.

rcl

If it is like the 767 (which I believe it its) then yes there are t/r's which supply dc. When the standby power selector is moved to the bat position then the batteries (both main and apu on 767 300 er) supply the standby ac and dc buses as well as the battery and hot battery buses and the chargers are taken out of the loop.

Thanks. I guess the plane I fly would need a total AC failure, including the Air Driven Generator, to actually have such DC issues, it's hard to imagine all this happening with both AC gens online.

rcl

The 757 and 767 electrical systems are almost the same. Hydraulics are different. Both have T/Rs in auto and switch to battery when bat is selected for standby power. An inverter supplies the standby ac bus. 30 minutes is the estimated life of the battery in bat mode.

11 years ago when I first got on the 747 I was trained ! never to use the rudder in an upset or UA, it was purely for use eng out and for X-wind T/O and LDGs, after the A300 incident nothing in our training manuals changed.

The 747 has always had a limiter but never a placard, correct training meant we knew when to use the rudder.

tell me, did the 747 flight manual state in the limitations section that you can, not should, but can only use the rudder for engine out and x winds?

I recall the 747 that managed to survive a violent upset, tearing off part of the elevator or was it stabilizer, to manage an emergency landing at KSFO.

Can't tell, I never took a single FAA exam. However, one of the lessons drummed into me during my PPL course was: never, ever rapidy cycle any flight control at any flying speed, on any aeroplane as you might get into resonance with something or other and get your flight control surface ripped off the airplane, sometimes together with the large parts of the airframe clinging on to it. Why FAA licensed flight schools fail to teach their students this fact of life is way beyond me. Perhaps Richard L. Collins hit the nail on the head when he wrote about proliferation of stall/spin accidents among the PPLs:

I am sorry if my original question came across as ironic or rethorical, it wasn't meant to be. Here it goes again: do you have a notion of what divergent oscillation is? You certainly should as it caused a lot of aircrews to come to grief, not just AA587.

Perhaps Airbus tought that every pilot knows that. Disclaimer at the beginning of my A320 FCOM says that this manual is not intended to teach the crew how to fly but rather to enable experienced crew to operate the related airplane type safely and proficiently.

are you saying the american airlines crew that died weren't experienced?

let me put it this way...we want to prevent accidents don't we?

I'm glad your private pilot course taught you all about this stuff.

But why didn't the FAA approved course teach these American pilots about this?

Why wasn't it included in any FAA course that I attended? (expostofacto not included)

Why haven't any US made planes fallen out of the skys with rapid cyclical rudder movememt?

why did the similiar A310 lose a piece of rudder and make an emergency return to Cuba?

glad that I don't fly the 'bus

The AA587 A300 was delivered from the factory with a patch on the vertical stabilizer because of delamination. It was at the base of the stab on the leading edge right where it separated from the aircraft that day. Since using those supposed wild alternating rudder applications just because of some wake turbulence would have probably killed any FA in the back out of her seat why did he elect to do it that day and why would the captain allow it?

If that vertical stab had failed initially at that patch can you imagine the wild yaw induced before it separated? Dead pilots always seem to be the least expensive way to settle an accident investigation.

Don't forget, rudder pedal position is NOT rudder pedal force. There was no force data on the FDR.

Also don't forget, the yaw damper had been written up and re-racked before the fatal flight.

perhaps it should have, but it isn't too well known that an aircraft's certified maneuver speed only protects against full rudder deflection in one direction NO aircraft is protected from sudden control reversal----even with rudder limiting---you can take off the tail/wings of any plane [even below Va] if you try to

411A, you are speaking out of your arse. Every airline in the US has had a string of accidents at one point in time or another. To sit here and blame AA procedures is in extremely poor taste. We have a training program as good as anyone else's - not without faults, but just as good none the less. The accidents AA has had have all been preceded in the past, and some will unfortunately reoccur in the future.

The MD80 debacle was NOT AA's fault, it was an FAA-mandated directive that came about after the whole SWA/FAA friendly fiasco, and they decided to crack down. AA was affected the most due to their big # of MD80s.

Cali was pilot error, no doubt. So was LIT. So was USAir in LGA - twice. So was DL in DFW, twice. So was CAL in DEN. Anything else? Pilot error can and will happen again. AA's pilot error record is no different than any other US airline.

I guess AA 1400 in STL (emergency landing after left engine exploded due to start valve open in flight, loss of hydraulics, single engine go-around) was just plain dumb luck, not pilot skill.

Get a clue.
73

there is no hard evidence that the rudder reversal was caused by the f/o. all the dfdr records is rudder movement, NOT rudder pedal movement. and with past problems with A300/A310-series aircraft and their tails, most folks do believe that blaming the pilot vs the aircraft manufacturer was the way to cover this up.

also glad I'm not on the 'Bus.
73

regarding our ORD 757. I've said this before and I'll say it again:

NO pilot in their right mind would continue a flight on battery power alone. Because of that, there is more to this story than what's in the report. Our pilots followed the Boeing-style QRH to the letter. Now there is an imminent change coming in the next revision. It is my belief the QRH led them down the wrong path, leading to battery discharge.

Regarding comments on poor system knowledge - the CA was an experienced and highly respected 757/767 ground instructor for years, who probably knew 757 systems as much as Boeing engineers. Highly unlikely he would have not known what was going on.

aa73---I made no mention of pilot actions just the fact that a low airspeed wont protect against rudder reversal--no matter how it was accomplished anyway I never really blamed the pilot--just the training thereof AA should have known that--somebody there should have

aa73,

Regardless of what 411A has said – the post you quote from seems to be missing as I write this – we seem to be getting more heat than light from several of you American cousins on this thread.

You and sevenstrokeroll add no credibility to your arguments by resorting to cheap shots at a foreign (to you) manufacturer. Many of us have been involved in aviation long enough to know that non-American aircraft do not have a monopoly of accidents involving structural failure.

We also understand that all airline training departments are fallible, even in Europe and America. At worst, they fail to hand down well-documented lessons that previous generations of their own crews – and even more likely the crews of rival airlines – have learned, often at great cost. It's part of the human condition, and as an old fart I observe the traditional tendency for young whiz-kids to think that history is irrelevant.
For what it's worth, I well remember doing my sim and base conversion on the B707 with AA at DFW in 1975. The jammed-stab arrival from Waco at a busy DFW was interesting, even in those days of a flight-engineer, but no complaints.


Don't know the Seven-Five, but electrical systems seem to evolve considerably on a given type; perhaps to an untidy complexity where it's impossible for pilots to understand all the possible implications of an obscure failure. Even if the fault indication(s) have been correctly identified, it may be that the EICAS/ECAM and QRH seem to suggest different courses of action. Load shedding MIGHT extend battery life. If in doubt, land within 30 minutes... But, by the time you've worked your way through the drills, most of the thirty are already gone.

It follows that unannounced further failures on final approach to a strange airfield – maybe cockpit lighting and EFIS failures at night – are likely. With the best will in the world, you may not know if you're going to get lift-dump, anti-skid, or which thrust-reversers might work. [Not suggesting this all applies to the B757.]

As any thinking pilot or F/E who routinely flies more than 30 minutes from the nearest suitable aerodrome – but on a route not requiring ETOPS equipment – will tell you, a 30-minute guarantee is not enough. Perhaps we should be installing batteries somewhat bigger than fitted in a large automobile or truck?

Some 757s can draw stby power from both the main and APU batteries. AAs are configured only to draw from the main, hence the 30 minute theoretical limit.

As far as working the problem taking a bulk of that 30 minutes, If you have a failure of the normal powering of the stby buses, it seems wise that you'd start pointing the aircraft towards the closest good airport, while you noted what was working and what wasn't (determine which stby bus was affected) and worked the very short checklist . . . Stby Power Switch - BAT, and called the ground engineers for an additional inputs.

From there you could figure out if you think you could land within the life of the battery, and if not maybe conserving battery by going back to AUTO.

bubbers 44 is right about the rudder problems...thanks for posting it.

as to the LGA crashes of USAIR...there is more to that/those than meet the eye.

the 737-400 that went off the end...I hope you will recall that boeing redesigned the rudder trim after the accident.

though certainly the pilot didn't help matters that day...I knew the copilot and heard the whole story.

also the F28...that crash is interesting because another F28 in canada crashed due to similiar circumstances and the information was not passed on properly.


chris scott...I have had the pleasure of flying 2 british built planes, one japanese built plane and numerous US built planes. All were very,very strong planes. And the rudder didn' t come off.

so don't tell me I am picking on a foreign manufacturer. I am picking on a particular type of plane though.