What made an Airbus rudder snap in mid-air?

[btacon 1,772]

Sub sez it all. Interesting that none of us picked up this story. Acording to the article, already NTSB is drawing parallels with AA 587.bthttp://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?artic...rnational_news/

[dseagrav 0]

Don't be so sure. Rumor from a usually reliable source has it that this aircraft was worked on about a week prior to the incident flight, and after the incident all of the documentation related to this work has vanished.

[Guest VApilot2004]

Posted about this over at FSN when it happened. Oddly enough mainstream media hasn't picked this up at allHere's a couple of rare photos:http://www.fsuniverse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=51kelly

[Guest Paul Heaney]

Anyone know the REG on the fuselage? I've flown a few of these birds, and am interested if this was one of them.

[Guest Paul Heaney]

OMG! It's C-GPAT! I flew on that very aircraft Last May between Toronto and Orlando, Found the REG on Airliners.net. Amazing.

[Guest VApilot2004]

Glad you and the most recent PAX are OK :)

[Guest Terry_ABQ]

Good pictures, especially of the composite material or what is left of it. The Air Buses have had from the begining flight control problems with the fly by wire system. Remember the one crashing on the test flight into the trees? I believe it is a combination of flight controls, composite materials, maintenance and engineering.Now this company is trying to build the A-380 to carry how many people?Terry

[Guest Charlie Delta]

"The Air Buses have had from the begining flight control problems with the fly by wire system. Remember the one crashing on the test flight into the trees?" Composite materials, maintenance and engineering might have been important factors here, but the fly by wire has nothing to do with this accident. As far as I know the A310 doesn't have a fly by wire system. As for the crash into the trees, that accident is often used, incorrectly so, by people to prove that FBW systems sometimes do things the pilot has not commanded. But in this case the pilot flying made his fly-by to low (below the tree line) and was to late with applying TOGA power. Even with all the flight control computers off the aircraft would still have crashed. (actually, it would probably have stalled first and than crashed)I hope an investigation will provide us with some answers, in particular about the composite materials and especially the long term effects of stress on composite parts. Every major new airliner rely on the use of composite materials, especially the A380 and even more so the Boeing 787.

[AlaskanFlyboy 7]

Wasn't there an Airbus at an airshow that crashed into some trees during a demonstration to show that the autopilot was so sophisticated it could fly the plane and land it without any pilot intervention?----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

[Guest]

Yes. In that instance the pilot had decided to make a low flyby. The computers in all their wisdom decided that an altitude like that is only ever used on short final and slowed the aircraft down to landing speed without being smart enough to notice they needed flaps to not stall at that speed.In fact that happened twice during demonstrations, and only after the second time did Airbus finally decide to install a manual override for the electronics.

[Guest Erick_Cantu]

The big problem with the A300 family's tail was that it's of single spar construction.It's a weak point.

[Guest Divergent Phugoid]

Not only did the A310 not use fly by wire, but also on FBW system airworthyness requirements dictate that the trim and rudder are mechanical so allow a degree of manual reversion in the event of a complete computer failure.The A310 incident has been blamed on two things:* Bad training: The pilot used an inappropriate amount of rudder to couteract dutch roll that can occurr at such attitudes and speeds.* Bad weighting: The system should have been weighted to discourage such a large amount of rudder input. Apparently the pilot could too easily cause a full rudder deflection which would probably break the fin off of most aircraft, but most aircraft's q-feel systems will prevent it happening by virtue of the amount of effort required.

[Donstim 109]

Nice to see that the urban legend about that crash is alive and well.The pilot's, in all their wisdom, disabled the alpha floor protection mode of the autothrust system, ignored three radar altimeter callouts when they deviated below their planned flyover altitude of 100 feet, neglected to plan an airspeed for the flyover, and allowed speed to continue to bleed off, and then were surprised that when the engines responded like normal modern high bypass turbofans and did not give them instant thrust. The "computers," to their credit, at least prevented the airplane from stalling.And what are you referring to when you say that this "happened twice during demonstrations, and only after the second time did Airbus finally decided to install a manual override for the electronics?" The autoflight system (that is, the autopilot and autothrust system) is not unique to the Airbus (you'll find it on every modern airliner), always had a manual switch for disabling it. And in this crash, it was disabled.Don S.

[victorwest2 0]

All modern aircraft are safe. It's the people that repair them or the people that fly them that can make them unsafe.

[Guest]

Hardly an urban legend.The aircraft made incorrect deductions based on its flightpath and performed a controlled flight into what it thought must be a runway.and as to autoflight systems, only Airbus had at the time systems in which the pilot is along for the ride and even at this stage only Airbus has those systems on by default and doesn't provide an easy way to turn them off.