Just spoke to an AIRBUS marketing guy at PARIS, when asked about the A305 ( A300 replacement ) he went right to the NTSB discussion - he said that the flight recorder showed the pilot stomped the rudder L-R-L / OR R-L-R - extremely sharply, in succession & exceeded the ultimate design load of the vertical "+10" what ever that means .... "ultimate +10". The NTSB will get to the bottom of this though .. In high-B maneuvers - the angle of attack of the vertical contributes greatly to the loading of the vertical ( IE the vertical is producing alot of lift laterally at high-B ) & aparently - stomping the rudder may have exceeded design limits - seems plausible - after all the poor pilots threw off both engines due to the violent roll-yawing - so I understand ... AIRBUS used an all composite design - whereas stodgy, conservative old Boeing uses "hybrid-composite" - IE metallic & composite retention on super critical areas such as this - so Ive read on the internet .. will be interesting to get the final scoop though ..

I'm led to believe the Boeing 7A7 is entirely of composite construction, not just the empenage but the whole fuselage as well?

Something More Than Just "Turbulence."
 

HotDog: The "metallic" tail failure in 1985 of the JA 74 was attributed to a faulty repair involving a flawed riveting pattern of the pressure dome. The damage had been caused by a tail scrape from an over-rotation incident 8 years earlier.

The survivable "metallic" tail failure of a B-52D in 1964 was attributed, in part, not soley to severe mountain wave rotors. At the time it was still classified, but the crew had been engaged in experimental high speed low level terrain following maneuvers. Needless to say, during simulated combat maneuvers that airframe's operating limitations had been exceeded. Undetected airframe limitations may be exceeded today, but the airframe or any of its components may not fail for many months or years

Recall when in 1986 Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager had taken off in the scaled composite Voyager for a nonstop, unrefueled flight around the globe: During the lengthy takeoff roll at Edwards AFB one of the wing tips had dragged on the runway and destroyed its winglet. Sometime after the craft had staggered to altitude, upon the recommendation of Burt Rutan, the builder, Dick had induced sufficient yawing motions to snap off the winglet on the opposite wing in order to regain aerodynamic symmetry.

This was but a small example of demonstrated effects of severe airframe yawing.

In the case of AA587, you'll note that both engines had snapped off during similar severe back and forth rudder induced yawing.
This catastophic failure was not caused by wake turbulence.

For those of you that are scared of plastic airplanes - opps composite - the new Raytheon Premier/Horizon - whose fuselage is wound like a baseball using filiment & resin - one recently ran off the runway during an RTO or something - it hit some fixed immovable structures & tore the wings & gear off - all about escaped intact - fuselage was intact - weighs less that 1000lbs & is as strong as an anvil ..

used2flyBoeing: Would an Airbus, Boeing or other manufacturer Marketing guy do anything except blame the pilots, no matter what type of incident or tragedy? Somehow, I have my doubts that they would discuss such things from a detached perspective, as NTSB, Transport Canada, British accident board members attempt to do.

Agreed - hard to argue with the flight recorder though - there are not many A300s left that are hauling people - United to my suprised uses them on red-eyes etc. But most are used for freight - I thought after 911 most of them would be retired - particularly after the FAA mandated a thrust revevser lock update that comprised not only clap-trap ( WSJ had an article onit last year ) - but new expensive nacelle cowls - to cover the clap-trap. But, I guess operators want to continue operating these old birds..

Airdisaster.com, today....