'97 Memo Cited in '01 Queens Airliner Crash (Airbus hid memo from AA)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/12/nyregion/12crash.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=

An airplane manufacturer's memo written in June 1997 explicitly describes the hazards of the maneuver that caused the November 2001 crash of an American Airlines plane in Belle Harbor, Queens, but the memo was kept within the company, and the pilot was never warned about the procedure.

American Airlines obtained the memo a few months ago from the manufacturer, Airbus, as part of its suit over how the companies will share the payments to the families of the 265 people killed in the crash of Flight 587. The memo is now being cited by American and the pilots' union in an effort to put part of the blame on Airbus.

The maneuver involved swinging the rudder from side to side, and the memo, written after a 1997 episode with a different American Airlines flight in the same kind of plane, an A300, warns that it could cause the tail to break off. That is what happened to Flight 587.

After the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a recommendation against the maneuver. If Airbus had shown the memo to the board before the crash, "instead of concealing it from them, the N.T.S.B. would have issued the recommendation before the crash," said John A. David, an American Airlines pilot who is the chief representative of the union, the Air Line Pilots Association, in the investigation.

I hope our DU pilots chime in on this - to this layperson this sounds like a FU'ed design flaw.

[pretzel4gore]

1. yeah sure...

flight 587 crashed same morning the NORC results were to be published...thanks to the 265 'folks' who gave their lives, geebush inc avoided the ghastly revelation in the media that bush's election numbers were WAY WAY LESS then al gore's.... and nothing anyone can try to say could change the hard fact.....911 did same thing 2 months earlier (forced postponement of publication of the NORC result)...
'they can fool some of the people some of the time....' as someone once said.
(btw the funny thing about crash of flight 587, which occurred in the morning, was how entire national/local media deduced that IT WAS AN ACCIDENT within minutes of the news.....and this story, that it was a, boo hoo, turrble accident and NOT A TERRORIST EVENT, was repeated ad nazism all day etc (a terror event would have destroyed US airline industry, severely damaged US economy, thus adversely effect geebush...hmmmm!)