Originally Posted by
III Corps
That was the great misunderstanding prior to AA587. Yes, you can go full deflection with the controls and then back to neutral (center). What you can NOT do is full deflection and a complete full deflection reversal. A recent presentation showed the forces created on the A300 rudder were about 4-5 times the design load. But aggressive rudder was part of the windshear training and also part of the 737 rudder hard-over training at one time.
Aircraft loading in flight can be asymmetrical (i.e. with multiple control inputs at the same time) The conventional thinking prior to 587 was that Va was based on wing loading (macro-level), not individual structural loading (micro-level).
Another key here is that maneuvering speed now has a bit to with components that do NOT change in weight even though the aircraft changes in weight. A rough example of this would be engine mounts, trim tabs, etc.
A full-rudder deflection in the A300 was almost the equivalent of doing a snap-roll in the aircraft
On a side note... I kinda like to think of Va as Velocity - acceleration from F=MA