1 plane, no rudder, few answers

[DoYouEverWonder]

March 15, 2005

WASHINGTON - Aviation investigators from the United States and Canada are trying to determine why a 27-foot-tall rudder broke off an Airbus A310 plane near the coast of South Florida last week.

Aviation safety experts said they were stunned to see pictures of the plane after it landed because nearly the entire rudder was gone.

It appears to have broken off the Air Transat charter plane about 30 minutes after it left Varadero, Cuba, en route to Quebec on March 6. The pilot thought he had a flight control problem but did not know the extent of the trouble.

"When he landed the aircraft, he had no idea he didn't have a rudder," said Rachel Andrews, a spokeswoman for Air Transat, a Canadian airline that has 10 A310s.

None of the 270 people on board were injured.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/15/Worldandnation/1_plane__no_rudder__f.shtml


Okay, I don't know anything about planes to even understand how it would be possible to fly without a rudder? Sure sounds like a lucky bunch of folks though.

[jpak]

1. Didn't an Airbus crash near NYC right after 9/11???

It lost its tail rudder too due to wake turbulence from another aircraft (so they said).

What happened here???

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Yes, that crash is discussed

further down in the story.

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. Yup - it's in the posted article:

.
.
.

" A preliminary examination of the plane's flight data recorder indicates the pilots did not make any major rudder commands like those that caused an American Airlines A300 crash in New York in November 2001.

In that crash, a pilot was startled by wake turbulence and repeatedly pushed on the rudder pedals. The plane yawed like a car skidding sideways on wet pavement, and the aerodynamic force snapped the tail."

___________________________________________-

nothing too sinister there

just not designed to handle like a fighter plane that's all!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. That was different.

In that accident the whole vertical stabilizer snapped off because of repeated full deflections of the rudder, which the structure wasn't designed to handle. In the situation described in this article it was just the rudder that came off, but the vertical stabilizer was intact.

[ladjf]

11. The entire vertical assembly fell off of that plane sending it

out of control. It was latter determined that the pilot may have caused the problem by using too much force. However, Airbus had known about the problem with the tail assembly but chose not to make the information public.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. The plane was able to continue to fly because it still had

the vertical stabilizer (tail fin). The rudder is the movable part at the back of the vertical stabilizer. In large airplanes it doesn't deflect much except at slow speeds, and normally would be used to control yaw when operating on only one engine or during takeoffs and landings in a crosswind. As long as the vertical stabilizer is intact the airplane should be able to keep flying.

Still, it's not a good thing when the rudder falls off.

[jmcgowanjm]

6. nearly the entire rudder gone-flt 587 entire rudder gone

GAMBLING: The theory that this plane, Flight 587, was
going through the wash of a 747 ahead of it - that really seems
to be sort of a bogus theory.

http://www.newsmax.com/showinside.shtml?a=2001/11/15/133624

It is not possible for any type of turbulence to rip off the tail of
an airplane, and then have it go out of control in such a way
that both engines would also fall
off.

The NTSB's claim that the loss of Flight 587's vertical fin
and rudder might be the cause of the loss of the control of
the plane which caused it to crash is both misleading
and deceptive-as in this current Air Transat's plane's ability to
land with no injuries.

Why am I thinking of the "Madrid building fire" now.

http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj111501.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Read the previous posts -- the incidents are entirely different.

Flight 587 lost the entire vertical stabilizer; the Air Transat plane lost only the rudder. That's a huge difference -- a plane can't fly at all without a vertical stabilizer, but it can fly without a rudder, which is only the moveable section.

[Zerex71]

8. Not so fast on the conspiracy theory.

Those vortices are extremely dangerous and standard takeoff spacing (90 seconds in many cases) is done precisely to avoid even getting into the envelope of danger. Those forces can be quite extensive and I suggest for you to read up on how many pounds of force or foot-pounds of torque they can generate before you assume they can't be capable of such action.

[jmcgowanjm]

13. I humbly state that being consistent is the problem here

Like in, if the vortices which brought down Flt 587
were so great, How come the vortices didn't move those
Pentagon cable spools.

And the FBI's film vault, I would love to see:

Recorded by a surveillance camera at a New York City
area tollbooth, the tape captures nearly the entire
catastrophe that sent the Airbus A300 crashing into a
residential neighborhood in Queens less than 3 min.
after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on
Nov. 12. According to an NTSB source, the plane can be
seen "flying along normally and intact, and suddenly things
start to go very wrong." (let me show this segment to
all here and the discussion's over) The video records the plane as it
begins its descent. The crash is obscured, but the
tape continues to run and smoke can be seen rising from
the scene.

http://www.airdisaster.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-53167.html

The public has never seen this film, or the Citgo/
Pentagon security film either.



You can't argue for "up", and then use the same arguement
for "down".

[daleo]

9. Air Transat had the dead stick landing in the Azores a few years ago

The plane ran out of fuel, but the pilot managed to glide to a landing. They are kind of lucky and unlucky at the same time.

[ladjf]

10. The rudder or "vertical stabilizer" play almost no role in the

plane guidance at high speeds. However, as the plane slows for landing and during the landing it is active and effective. As a pilot with over 5,000 hrs. I was surprised to read that the Airbus pilot was unaware that his rudder had fallen off. It must have been pretty embarrassing to learn about the problem from someone on the ground.

[ladjf]

12. See ocelot's definitions of vertical stabilizer and rudder.

Mine was confusing. Sorry.

[rasputin1952]

14. Having worked in the Aerospace Industry, few things are more...

disconcerting than parts falling off of aircraft. I find it strange, that a pilot would not know that a good portion of the rudder was missing. While the aircraft could indeed fly, there would have certainly been noticable fluctuations as to HOW the aircraft flew; which most likely explains why he landed in FL as soon as he/she could.

Apparently, maintenance is pretty lax. Hours and # of flights count in overall aircraft maintenance. Takeoffs/landings count in wheel and brake maintenance. Pre-flight checks might haveshown something amiss; but a pre-flight check might also have caused a problem.

Someone was asleep at the switch...:(

[DemoTex]

15. B-52 without rudder and 80% of vertical stabilizer.

This was truly amazing. A B-52 has more wing sweep than any commercial airliner, so one would expect a significant Dutch roll problem with so much of the vertical tail gone. However, the crew landed this B-52 safely.

[leftofthedial]

16. you can (sort of) fly without a rudder, the surprise is

that the pilot didn't know. without a rudder, you steer a twin-engine plane like the AB310 by increasing or decreasing the thrust in one engine or the other.

He must have already been very close to landing and already lined up with the runway.