Whew, I sure am glad it was pilot error, and not what the NTSB supervisor told me a few days after the crash. The supervisor, a very good friend of mine and someone I had worked with for many years, told me they found C-4 residue and were pretty sure the plane was brought down by a bomb. Just goes to show you how wrong some people can be when they don't know all of the "real" facts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/n...&en=1fea3e14f718a6f4&ei=5094&partner=homepage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NYTimes
October 27, 2004
Pilot Actions and Training Cited in '01 Airliner Crash in Queens
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, the second-worst aviation accident in American history, was caused by the pilot's "unnecessary and excessive" use of the rudder. But flawed training by the airline and poor rudder design were major contributing factors, the board said.
The plane, an Airbus A300, crashed shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 12, 2001, killing all 260 people on board and 5 more on the ground in Belle Harbor, Queens. It was bound for the Dominican Republic.
Encountering turbulence, the pilot moved the rudder back and forth to try to keep the wings at the proper angle, pushing the plane into a fatal oscillation, according to staff members of the safety board. The force of the wind eventually ripped the vertical tail fin off, sending the A300 plunging into houses on the Rockaway Peninsula.
Sten Molin, the first officer, was at the controls as the plane hit the turbulence, the wake of a Boeing 747 that had taken off shortly before. The board said that he pushed the rudder too far to one side and then overcorrected by pushing hard in the other direction, and that the crash would not have occurred had he not touched the rudder.
The board also noted that the rudder control system on the A300 was overly sensitive, and that American Airlines' training methods might have misled pilots into thinking that using the rudder was the only choice in that situation.
The board's findings are only advisory, but will probably play into litigation now in progress in New York, where Airbus and American are negotiating how much each should pay to compensate victims' relatives.
"It was a unique combination of events," said Ellen Engleman Conners, the chairwoman of the board. Mark Rosenker, the vice chairman, called it a "tragic coupling." Encountering the wake of the plane ahead of it, the A300 hit one of the two horizontal tornadoes that any plane leaves behind. According to the official transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, the captain, Edward A. States, said, "Little wake turbulence, huh?" to Mr. Molin. "Yeah," he responded. A few seconds later, the A300 hit the second wake.
"You all right?" asked the captain. "Yeah, I'm fine," he responded. "Hang on to it, hang on to it," the captain said.
The fatal sequence took less than eight seconds.
According to the board's final report, which was discussed in the meeting Tuesday but not publicly released, two pilots who had previously flown with Mr. Molin said he reacted too aggressively to wake turbulence. But the report also said that American's pilots might have been left with the impression that jumbo jets like the A300 can recover from turbulence only by use of the rudder, a problem staff experts called "negative training."
"Rudder input was not necessary," said John Clark, the board's chief staff official for aviation safety. He said Mr. Molin's use of the rudder and of the ailerons, flaps used to keep the wings level, were "very aggressive."
The five-member board agreed unanimously on the causes but disagreed over whether the training or the tail sensitivity should rank second.
For all airliners there is a "maneuvering speed" above which rudder use is unsafe, but the A300's system for limiting rudder use as speed increases is unusual. On most planes, as speed increases, the pedal must be pushed farther and farther to get a given amount of movement out of the rudder. On the A300 and the A310, the system simply limits how far the pedal can move. The result is that very small pedal movements produce relatively large rudder changes. Since pushing the rudder produces a delayed result, pilots may push too far when they get no immediate response, then overshoot.
Dr. Malcolm Brenner, a psychologist with the board, called it "an inherently unfriendly design."
The crash investigation exposed a widespread misunderstanding among pilots about when it is safe to use the rudder. Many pilots thought that if they were below maneuvering speed, any rudder use was allowed.
In fact, to be certified as airworthy, a tail must be sturdy enough to allow the rudder to be pushed as far as it will go in one direction and keep the plane flyable. But a tail is not meant to withstand the rudder being applied in alternating directions. Engineers apparently did not convey this to pilots, however. John Lauber, a former member of the safety board who is now a safety official at Airbus, said in an interview that there was never any reason to believe that any pilot would want to use the rudder in alternating directions.
American Airlines had argued vigorously in the last few weeks that one reason for the crash was Airbus's failure to tell all it knew about rudder problems in a 1997 incident involving the same kind of plane. In that incident, American Airlines Flight 903 lost altitude suddenly near West Palm Beach, Fla., and the crew recovered sloppily but managed to prevent a crash. Some board members said that they wished they had known more about that incident earlier, but they rejected American's contention that it was a warning that could have helped the industry prevent the crash of Flight 587.
"You really can't look at 903 and predict to the future of the events that played out in 587," said Mr. Clark, the aviation safety official.
After the board voted to accept the staff report, the airline said in a statement: "How is safety served, how is future aviation safety enhanced, by blaming the pilot, who had no way of knowing the design sensitivities of that airplane because Airbus, who did know, never told safety investigators, never told operators and never told pilots?"
Airbus said in its statement that it was "surprised" by the concern about rudder sensitivity. The plane maker calculated that the co-pilot had used 140 pounds of force on the rudder pedal, enough to have "resulted in full rudder reversals on any commercial aircraft anywhere in the world."
Airbus said it had warned several times on the possibility that using the rudder in alternating directions could make a plane break up in flight, including in its submission to the safety board on the Flight 903 investigation. American said that this was not clear to the airline.
In the board meeting, staff members and members of the board engaged in extended discussions intended to disprove the idea that the crash was caused by sabotage. At the time of the crash, the wreckage of the World Trade Center was still burning, and witnesses insisted that they saw the plane on fire before it crashed. But board staff members said what they saw might have been the result of fuel leaking after the engines tore off as the plane broke up.
The board also rejected the idea that the tail failed because it was made of composite materials. The crash is the first of an airliner in which failure of a composite part played a key role.
American has 34 other planes of the same model, the A300-600. Among carriers in the United States, FedEx and UPS also fly them.
The worst aviation accident in the country's history occurred on May 25, 1979, when a DC-10 went down after takeoff from O'Hare in Chicago when an engine fell off. That crash killed 271 people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/n...&en=1fea3e14f718a6f4&ei=5094&partner=homepage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NYTimes
October 27, 2004
Pilot Actions and Training Cited in '01 Airliner Crash in Queens
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 - The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, the second-worst aviation accident in American history, was caused by the pilot's "unnecessary and excessive" use of the rudder. But flawed training by the airline and poor rudder design were major contributing factors, the board said.
The plane, an Airbus A300, crashed shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 12, 2001, killing all 260 people on board and 5 more on the ground in Belle Harbor, Queens. It was bound for the Dominican Republic.
Encountering turbulence, the pilot moved the rudder back and forth to try to keep the wings at the proper angle, pushing the plane into a fatal oscillation, according to staff members of the safety board. The force of the wind eventually ripped the vertical tail fin off, sending the A300 plunging into houses on the Rockaway Peninsula.
Sten Molin, the first officer, was at the controls as the plane hit the turbulence, the wake of a Boeing 747 that had taken off shortly before. The board said that he pushed the rudder too far to one side and then overcorrected by pushing hard in the other direction, and that the crash would not have occurred had he not touched the rudder.
The board also noted that the rudder control system on the A300 was overly sensitive, and that American Airlines' training methods might have misled pilots into thinking that using the rudder was the only choice in that situation.
The board's findings are only advisory, but will probably play into litigation now in progress in New York, where Airbus and American are negotiating how much each should pay to compensate victims' relatives.
"It was a unique combination of events," said Ellen Engleman Conners, the chairwoman of the board. Mark Rosenker, the vice chairman, called it a "tragic coupling." Encountering the wake of the plane ahead of it, the A300 hit one of the two horizontal tornadoes that any plane leaves behind. According to the official transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, the captain, Edward A. States, said, "Little wake turbulence, huh?" to Mr. Molin. "Yeah," he responded. A few seconds later, the A300 hit the second wake.
"You all right?" asked the captain. "Yeah, I'm fine," he responded. "Hang on to it, hang on to it," the captain said.
The fatal sequence took less than eight seconds.
According to the board's final report, which was discussed in the meeting Tuesday but not publicly released, two pilots who had previously flown with Mr. Molin said he reacted too aggressively to wake turbulence. But the report also said that American's pilots might have been left with the impression that jumbo jets like the A300 can recover from turbulence only by use of the rudder, a problem staff experts called "negative training."
"Rudder input was not necessary," said John Clark, the board's chief staff official for aviation safety. He said Mr. Molin's use of the rudder and of the ailerons, flaps used to keep the wings level, were "very aggressive."
The five-member board agreed unanimously on the causes but disagreed over whether the training or the tail sensitivity should rank second.
For all airliners there is a "maneuvering speed" above which rudder use is unsafe, but the A300's system for limiting rudder use as speed increases is unusual. On most planes, as speed increases, the pedal must be pushed farther and farther to get a given amount of movement out of the rudder. On the A300 and the A310, the system simply limits how far the pedal can move. The result is that very small pedal movements produce relatively large rudder changes. Since pushing the rudder produces a delayed result, pilots may push too far when they get no immediate response, then overshoot.
Dr. Malcolm Brenner, a psychologist with the board, called it "an inherently unfriendly design."
The crash investigation exposed a widespread misunderstanding among pilots about when it is safe to use the rudder. Many pilots thought that if they were below maneuvering speed, any rudder use was allowed.
In fact, to be certified as airworthy, a tail must be sturdy enough to allow the rudder to be pushed as far as it will go in one direction and keep the plane flyable. But a tail is not meant to withstand the rudder being applied in alternating directions. Engineers apparently did not convey this to pilots, however. John Lauber, a former member of the safety board who is now a safety official at Airbus, said in an interview that there was never any reason to believe that any pilot would want to use the rudder in alternating directions.
American Airlines had argued vigorously in the last few weeks that one reason for the crash was Airbus's failure to tell all it knew about rudder problems in a 1997 incident involving the same kind of plane. In that incident, American Airlines Flight 903 lost altitude suddenly near West Palm Beach, Fla., and the crew recovered sloppily but managed to prevent a crash. Some board members said that they wished they had known more about that incident earlier, but they rejected American's contention that it was a warning that could have helped the industry prevent the crash of Flight 587.
"You really can't look at 903 and predict to the future of the events that played out in 587," said Mr. Clark, the aviation safety official.
After the board voted to accept the staff report, the airline said in a statement: "How is safety served, how is future aviation safety enhanced, by blaming the pilot, who had no way of knowing the design sensitivities of that airplane because Airbus, who did know, never told safety investigators, never told operators and never told pilots?"
Airbus said in its statement that it was "surprised" by the concern about rudder sensitivity. The plane maker calculated that the co-pilot had used 140 pounds of force on the rudder pedal, enough to have "resulted in full rudder reversals on any commercial aircraft anywhere in the world."
Airbus said it had warned several times on the possibility that using the rudder in alternating directions could make a plane break up in flight, including in its submission to the safety board on the Flight 903 investigation. American said that this was not clear to the airline.
In the board meeting, staff members and members of the board engaged in extended discussions intended to disprove the idea that the crash was caused by sabotage. At the time of the crash, the wreckage of the World Trade Center was still burning, and witnesses insisted that they saw the plane on fire before it crashed. But board staff members said what they saw might have been the result of fuel leaking after the engines tore off as the plane broke up.
The board also rejected the idea that the tail failed because it was made of composite materials. The crash is the first of an airliner in which failure of a composite part played a key role.
American has 34 other planes of the same model, the A300-600. Among carriers in the United States, FedEx and UPS also fly them.
The worst aviation accident in the country's history occurred on May 25, 1979, when a DC-10 went down after takeoff from O'Hare in Chicago when an engine fell off. That crash killed 271 people.
