Co-Pilots Rudder Movements "Unnecessary And Aggressive"

The way AAL 587 copilot Sten Molin manipulated the Airbus A300-600's rudder pedals was the probable cause of the November 2001 crash that killed all 260 people on board, as well as five on the ground, according to an NTSB investigator who spoke in Washington Tuesday.

"The first officer's control wheel and rudder inputs during the second wake encounter were unnecessary and too aggressive," said investigator Robert Benzon.

But there were other contributing factors, Benzon said -- including the way American Airlines trains its pilots to deal with wake turbulence and the way the airline sets up its simulators to mimic such events. The NTSB investigator also cited the rudder control system itself as being sensitive at higher speeds.

AAL 587 went down in Belle Harbor (NY), just two minutes after departing JFK on its way to the Dominican Republic, after hitting turbulence on climb-out. Molin, who was flying the plane, repeatedly swung the rudder from stop to stop, a technique he was trained to perform when trying to regain control of the aircraft in heavy turbulence.

"Hang onto it, hang onto it," Capt. Edward States urged.

"Let's go for power, please," Molin said.

But just a second later, the sound of a loud bang could be heard on the CVR, a sound marking the delamination of the vertical stabilizer, according to investigators. Alarms sounded in the cockpit.

"What the hell are we into (inaudible)?" Molin said. "We're stuck in it."

Five seconds later, States uttered his last words: "Get out of it! Get out of it!"

Molin obviously didn't know that he was applying more pressure to the rudder pedals than the vertical stabilizer was designed to take. Why that happened and who's responsible -- those are questions that continue to linger.  Airbus blames Molin and American Airlines. But awash in red ink, facing huge liability exposure and certain that their pilot training was adequate, AAL executives say the problem was in the design of the aircraft itself. They believe the A300-600's maker, Airbus, should shoulder all or at least some of the liability in the 280 lawsuits stemming from the November 12, 2001 accident.

Key to American's argument is a recently-discovered internal memo at Airbus pointing to known flaws in the design of the A300 rudder system. The memo, written in June, 1997, came from Daimler-Benz Aerospace, one of Airbus's production partners. In part, the memo said, "rudder movements from left limit to right limit" on an A300 "will produce loads on the fin/rear fuselage above ultimate design load."

If Airbus had shown the memo to the NTSB before the crash of Flight 587 "instead of concealing it from them, the NTSB would have issued the recommendation before the crash," said John A. David, an American Airlines pilot who is the chief representative of the Air Line Pilots Association in the investigation.

American spokesman Bruce Hicks wholeheartedly agreed. "It's easy to focus on what started the sequence of events" that led to the crash, he said. "Airbus never told safety investigators about previous incidents."

But American pilots and executives knew about at least one incident that occurred in 1997 -- because one of their own planes was involved. An A300-600 on approach to West Palm Beach (FL) almost crashed when the flight crew tried a similar side-to-side rudder movement to steady the plane in turbulence. The aircraft almost fell out of the sky. One person was seriously hurt.

Shortly after the crash of AAL 587, the aircraft involved in the 1997 incident was given a closer look. Inspectors found cracks in the vertical stabilizer and ordered it replaced.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov