Sliceback

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=crwVUwg7STQ

The event starts at 4:01. Vertical stabilizer failure occurs at 4:08.

TCASTESTOK

So why did the NTSB blame AAMP? From what I saw in the videos, Vandenburgh didnt really touch on over controlling with rudder.

If anything, what occurred in THIS video is insane and im betting that the PF had to do the carpet dance after this landing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roS6oFjCDhc&t=24s

Its like 30..20...10... BOOM full right rudder BOOM full left rudder BOOM right BOOM left BOOM right. Real good way to overstress that rudder. What are you guys thoughts on it?

Arado 234

What were other airlines' training programs, like FedEx, about rudder inputs? I remember having talked to an old friend flying the A300/310 at LH about this and he found this rudder correction to be very unusual. If my memory serves me right, the general feedback on pprune was not very supportive of this rudder input method.

Again, just hearsay. Never flew the A300. Just an outside point of view.

Sliceback

Completely different loads at 140-150 kts on the ground and 250 KIAS airborne.

The A300 had the lightest flight controls, to include the rudder, in the industry.

The rudder design system is/was the same as the 707/727/737. The kicker is the amount of input(force in lbs), and rudder travel required, to get X deflection of the rudder is less on th A300. That's where the A300 was the more sensitive. The inputs made might have snapped vertical stabilizers on other airliners. The difference is the onset rate on other aircraft would have been slightly slower(due to force and rudder pedal travel required) so the risk of 'startle effect', and/or PIO, would have been less.

Hacker15e

The NTSB report is very heavy on testimony from 3 or 4 Captains this FO had flown with (including aircraft other than the A300 IIRC, but it has been a while since I read it), and they all reported his tendency to grossly over-manipulate the flgiht controls when any non-standard situation was encountered.

Anyone who reads the report's references to the rudder techniques taught in AAMP (and has watched the AAMP video about upset recovery), taken in context with the testimony, and concludes that the root cause of the FO's actions was something the accident FO learned in AAMP doesn't have very good critical thinking skills.

AAMP upsets a lot of apple carts with the techniques it advocates. It is almost funny how many pilots, when discussing the AAMP series today, will immediately cite the A300 crash and massively overstate AAMP's relation to the cause, and use that to discredit Capt Vanderburgh and/or nearly anything/everything advocated in the AAMP series.

You can almost set a watch to someone making the comment, "well, that stuff works well for fighters, but not in transport category aircraft....", as if Warren just woke up one morning and decided to poop all this stuff out in a lecture hall without actually knowing if it worked or not in the airplanes flown by him and the pilots he was teaching.

There is a lot to learn in that series still for pilots today, regardless of what kind of experience is in your background prior to the airlines (or side-experience in aviation outside the airlines).

Sliceback

Bingo x2.

Funny that the FAA stall training has gone back to AOA reduction. Vandenberg talked about that as well as rudder inputs at high AOA. His point, almost verbatim, was "don't forget it's there (the rudder) if you need it." He didn't advocate it as a primary roll device under normal operations.

aa73

Again. 587 had nothing to do with AAMP and everything to do with protecting Airbus and its deficient rudder limiter, something no A300-600 pilot really knew about at the time.

When Sten Molin was "banging the rudder left and right" full travel, he had no idea. He thought he was making very minor rudder inputs. He certainly wasn't about to apply full rudder reversals, in fact his pedal movements should have corresponded with small rudder movements. He was applying rudder because full aileron inputs were not arresting the roll rates. But he had no idea that the rudder limiter did not work as he thought.

In other words. A300-6 pilots never had any idea of the monsters they were dealing with WRT the rudder.

The NTSB may claim that they are nothing more an investigative branch of the government in place to protect the travelling public but in reality the corruption that flows out of that place to protect certain interests is astounding.

jcountry

Interesting.

I’ll have to look for that again.

Been ages since I saw it.

I also heard a theory that the plane may have had clogged up drain holes for the fuselage and perhaps a lot of water sloshing around in the belly-which would have multiplied the inertial effect.

I am familiar with that happening on some smaller airliners.

ShyGuy

Sounds like denial. Even your own AA coworkers that flew with him testified he slammed the hell out of rudder pedals in wake encounters. While the AAMP never said to hit the rudder pedals back n forth repeteadly, SM used it as his justification for what he did to the CA of the 727 he flew with. This portion is in the final report. Testimony of people who flew with him prior.

The main problem with the AAMP that the NTSB had a real issue with was the instructors comments about how limit the bank to 70 degrees in unusual att recovery, because what he saw in the sim was at 90 degrees, there wasn’t much horizontal component of lift to roll back fast enough. The theory sounds great and all, but what alarmed the NTSB and Airbus is AA’s open admitedness that they were using the sims to 90 degrees bank. Those sims are not certified to reflect actual flight and reactions at that bank angle. Also disturbing, is that the NTSB found for the wake encounter excercise, the crew would be told they are behind a 747, and then the sim would bank one way for 10 degrees, and then flip the other way to a 90 degree bank. And during this time, pilot control inputs are locked out/ignored by the sim. Once at 90 degrees, then the sim allowed control input effectiveness. But all that did was negatively teach pilots that a wake could actually flip you 90 degrees and your controls are useless in the initial get go. The A300 has too much mass, momentum, inertia, and large wing to roll a FULL 90 degrees from a wake encounter. It wouldn’t happen. But this was SM’s sim practice. So when he launched in the real world behind a JAL 747, he was already prepped for a worse case 90 degree potential roll. His actions were immediate and obviously overkill.

While the theory of the AAMP is good, it was completely inaccurate in some of the sim excercises that rolled and pitched the airplane sims beyond what the sim was certified for.

Your explanation of his rudder use and how he meant small angles on the rudder are not matching reality. SM was lost in a world of his own. Already at 250 knots, climbing safely, he asks for max power twice. The CA never did (rightfully so). Just shows you the mindset of SM and what he was feeling (potential imminent ground contact, need to power out of this situation, etc). On a wake encounter in which the plane rolls, even 45 degrees, it should have been countered with pure aileron roll. The A300 at 250 knots in a slight climb AOA did not need any rudder. He was never on the back side of the power curve, and certainly above cross over angle of attack.


He screwed up, I don’t see a cover up for Airbus or the A300. No other A300 crashed for this reason. This time isn’t like the DC10 aft cargo door issue that took out several DC10s...

jcountry

I have always mainly faulted the design.

NO way should AB have designed any plane which can lose it's damned tail with any rudder inputs like that.

I do still think the crossover speed stuff is a bit inappropriate. It's more of a "gee whiz, that's kind of interesting to know about" thing than any kind of advice which could ever really be applied to an airliner.

The closest I can think of that sort of situation was Air France 447, and they had a hell of a lot bigger problems than crossover speed.

I'm still amazed that the tail broke off in any case. The guy was rough on the controls perhaps, but was nowhere near the stops.