Originally Posted by
dojetdriver
That was what I thought, as much as they like to pin in on the FO, as well as AA's training, it wasn't ENTIRELY his fault.
And to comment on what another guy posted. Wasn't the vertical stab bolted on with a combination of metal and composite materials. And it was discovered that the metal bolts held up, while the composites failed?
Actually the composite rudder was bolted to the metal plane, but the tail failed exactly at it's design failure point--no malfunctions. This was all in the final report, but this was a case of a rudder dublet, or double the force on the rudder after two rapid applications in opposite directions. You can jamb in a control on a plane at any time in the flight envelope and be fine, but you had better let the plane return to a nuetral state before trying the rudder again immediately in the opposite direction. The aircraft was NEVER designed to take that amount of stress and was the cause of Flight 587's crash.
c17turtle
former AA A-300 FO at NY