Cynicallous

A light, airy, effervescent, blog of grave consequence. (NOT!) Dedicated to those of us who must respond to negative stimuli by Chernobyling (entombing in concrete) our innermost thoughts.

Name:
Location: Slaughter, Louisiana, United States

A semi-gruntled corporate reliability engineer trying to make ends meet while keeping my wife happy, and myself out of the asylum.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

NTSB Report on American Flight 587

The NTSB has released its report detailing its findings related to the crash of the Airbus A300-600 on November 12, 2001 in New York City. They are blaming the Co-pilot for effectively trying too hard to correct the airliner's attitude after encountering turbulence shortly after takeoff.

They state that because of the way the A-300 is designed, sharp movements of the rudder pedals can cause excessive deflection of the rudder surface and, in this case, cause the entire rudder to break away from the airframe.

Now, I'm just a moron engineer with an average Bachelor's degree, but I think that were I designing any airplane, and I KNEW that there was a way to cause the tail to snap off in flight, I'd modify some of the controls to eliminate the possibility of that ever happening. Hell, I thought the Airbusses were Fly-By-Wire anyway? Why didn't they program the damned thing to NOT SNAP THE TAIL OFF?

I'm praying that the rest of the planes in our global fleet aren't so well engineered.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I still find it hard to believe that American companies buy the French Airbus. I'll never fly on one! I really don't trust their attitudes. They always claim to be the best but they cut corners and would cheat at anything to make money. They are crass and groveling. The only things the French have going for them is a beautiful, precise language and their practical peasant stock!

2:11 PM  

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