American Airlines A300 Crash

Yes, I felt the programme makers were a little too keen to interview the AA pilots – who came across as jerks, in all honesty.

They want to fly Boeings now, because they don’t like composite tailfins, but I’m sure 777’s have composites too! Maybe they meant 727s? Professionally, they were prepared to publicly criticise an aircraft that millions of people fly on, yet they couldn’t even contemplate there may have been something other than an Airbus design fault at issue.

Similarly, Airbus gave the impression of being quite an uncommunicative company. Mentally though, I did expect that but I was a little unprepared for the AA attitude to it all.

Still, well done overall to the programme makers. It was one of the more balanced productions I’ve seen, and more or less resisted the temptation to bash Airbus.

Yes Bhoy , aka “euphemism”

Originally posted by Moondance
http://aviation-safety.net/database/1991/910211-0.htm for the Interflug A310.

bloody hell, Occurrence: Incident that’s the technical term for a double forward salto, followed by a pirouette and finally a backwards loop, then?

Originally posted by Ren Frew
She was a great looking plane in AA colours all the same.

Agree !

http://aviation-safety.net/database/1991/910211-0.htm for the Interflug A310.

She was a great looking plane in AA colours all the same.

Just watched it this morning and yes it’s inconclusive, but that’s not the job of the filmakers, more the job of the NTSB. Maybe they should have waited until the final report was published before making the programme ?

I also felt they were having a go at composites early on but this was just being put forward as one of many possible factors to bconsider . The programme did have the potential to turn into a pro Boeing/ anti Airbus propaganda piece at one stage, when they mentioned four A300 pilots featured had applied to fly only Boeings after the accident, inferring there something about Airbus that was at fault.

I did feel sorry for the families of the victims though , having to sit at the hearings listening to Airbus and AA trying to absolve themselves of any blame and watching the simulator mock ups of the crash must have been awful. I felt the views of these people were hardly represented in the film

It sounds like it will be one of those incidents were no one single factor or party will take the blame, but a part of the blame will be apportioned to Airbus, AA and perhaps the tower at New York ?

It was interesting to hear the pilot question the distance between his plane and the just departed JAL 747 whilst on the runway waiting to take off. He obviously had wake turbulence on his mind.

…but they couldn’t be seen to be making definitive conclusions before the NTSB publish the results of their enquiry.

dhfan – in jet transports you have to be very careful about rudder usage which is why it is not recommended in aircraft type specific ops manuals. In tiny little puddle jumpers where the speeds are low and the masses are light the rudder can be abused with relatively little worry but apply these techniques to a big jet and this is the result. This is why I have come to the conclusion I wrote in my note 2.

bhoy – yes, I forgot to mention in my original post that I would like to know a lot more about the Interflug incident at SVO. We’ve got loads of eastern bloc specialists on the forum, perhaps they can shed more light.

A very well put together programme remained neutral and showed all the parties presented arguments. However, I agree some questions were not sufficiently answer.

First time I’ve ever looked at this forum, not my main interest.

Generally, I’ve got a lot of time for Horizon but I watched the programme and it seemed to not really give final answers.
They started several lines of investigation, isinuating, or at least inferring, various design/material errors. Didn’t really clear the design after effectively saying it was flown wrong.

Did I hear right that ALL aircraft manufacturers now say don’t use rudder to correct in-flight attitudes?

Any drivers, airframe got any comments to make?
I gather it’s only large aircraft it applies to.

did anyone else get the feeling Horizon raised some issues and never really satisfactorily answered them?

And yes, I did find the AA handbook astonishing, that it appeared to use a rear mounted twin for demonstrations, which is decidely lighter than an A300 which I can’t really conceive as ending up upside down and needing rudder movements to correct it.

but going back to the open questions, does anyone have any details of the previous incidents they cited, an AA A300 at Miami in (I think) ’99 and an Interflug A310 (I never even knew they operated Western models) at Moscow Shermything in ’91 (now that did look like a roller coaster ride from hell 😮 )? Can’t recall having heard of either before, and surely they were instrumental to the narration of the AA587 incident.

My copy’s on VHS to watch tomoz or on sunday – should be interesting!

I thought it was a fairly well made and thought provoking program. My own personal conclusions boiled down to-

1) I believe the key problem here lay with the AA training department. I find it ludicrous that in this day and age they are teaching their pilots to apply light aircraft recovery techniques for unusual attitude recoveries. How on earth AA can justify to the insurance companies that they recommend a technique that contradicts the manufacturers recommended technique baffles me.

2) I had always believed in the thought that pilots should gain as much experience as possible in light aircraft before transferring to large transports. I wonder how much of the copilots actions were ingrained because of too much time at the controls of Cessnas. Perhaps there is a point where it makes sense to leave light aviation early and focus on commercial flying techniques. This is a major reversal in my previous views on aviation training and one that I don’t make lightly.

3) It took me a little while to fathom why Airbus would have created a reduction in rudder pedal movement for a given rudder deflection after lift off but I can only assume it is to assist the pilot in the post V1 engine failure scenario. It does seem very poor that this information was not better relayed to operating crews during type conversion.

4) While not believed to be a contributory factor there is definitely a need to start utilising ultrasound in composite airframe component inspection. The documentary did start to annoy me a bit for the short period they seemed to be attacking the idea of using composites but lets not forget that Boeing have now adopted composites for fin designs themselves.

Mongu – You mention about Airbus using computers that could prevent pilots getting unruly with the controls, etc. This only came into effect with the A320 family onwards. The A300 and A310 are effectively Airbus’s attempt at creating their own 767 and are largely identical in technological status.

Regards
wys