[Buckaroo]

They can't keep thier rudder attached.


http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/25/news/briefs.html

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

"A plane operated by Canadian-based Air Transat lost nearly the entire rudder - the vertical moving part at the back of the tail fin - soon after leaving Cuba for Quebec on March 6. The pilot was able to make a controlled return to Varadero, Cuba."

That's funny, when I went on my vacation 2 weeks ago the lady next to me said her trip to Las Vegas got cancelled because she was at the airport when the news came that the fleet was grounded because of that. The said they haven't even founded the rudder (at the time).

I am surprised the captain was able to land. Wasn't that the same reason that plane smashed into the burbs in NY shortly after 9/11?

[Busemann]

This happens in the industry all the time, but it's a good thing they'll fix it before any fatal accident has happened. I think you can continue to feel relatively safe in any commercial jet, be it Airbus or Boeing

Only affects a limited number of planes too:

The FAA directive, to be issued Monday, affects A310s and A300-600s. American Airlines and FedEx, the only U.S. airlines that fly those models, have 112 of the planes in total.

[bubblewrap]

There has been a fatal crash.
The Airbus has a fatal design flaw in the way the vertical fin is anchored to the eppenage(tail). It would require the entire tail to be redesigned with metal supports and the vertical fin to have metal mounting yokes. As long as they are inspected regularly and the delaminating composites replaced, they're safe.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
There has been a fatal crash.

That was a pilot error according to expert members of this forum in another thread.

[Buckaroo]

I will still never fly in an AirBus

[DigitalEl]

I will still never fly in an AirBus

That's brilliant. Enjoy your Freedom Fries from the aft seat on Greyhound.

Airbus builds great airplanes. So does Boeing... And Bombardier... And Embraer. To "not fly" a model of airplane b/c of one incident is nothing short of retarded. Do a little research on US Air Flight 412, which crashed in Pittsburgh in 1994. What caused it? A Boeing rudder malfunction. Sh!t happens. It gets fixed. Planes keep flying.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by DigitalEl:
That's brilliant. Enjoy your Freedom Fries from the aft seat on Greyhound. [/B]

[Buckaroo]

Originally posted by DigitalEl:
That's brilliant. Enjoy your Freedom Fries from the aft seat on Greyhound.

Airbus builds great airplanes. So does Boeing... And Bombardier... And Embraer. To "not fly" a model of airplane b/c of one incident is nothing short of retarded. Do a little research on US Air Flight 412, which crashed in Pittsburgh in 1994. What caused it? A Boeing rudder malfunction. Sh!t happens. It gets fixed. Planes keep flying. [/B]

I ain't going to fly in any Socialist leaning piece of crap.

I'll fly Boeing.

[Goldfinger]

Originally posted by Buckaroo:
I ain't going to fly in any Socialist leaning piece of crap.

I'll fly Boeing.

Retard.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by Buckaroo:
I ain't going to fly in any Socialist leaning piece of crap.

I'll fly Boeing.

Yeeeeeeehaaaaw!

[effgee]

Originally posted by Buckaroo:
I will still never fly in an AirBus

Bah humbug - there's only three things you need to make sure of before getting on one of those European deathtraps:

1. Never get on an Airbus which was (partly) assembled/engineered/designed by badidea. Not only is he German, he also lives/works in Hamburg - as if being German wasn't punishment enough.
2. More generally, make 100% sure that you, under no circumstances whatsoever, get on a European airplane that is owned and operated by a Canadian airline. If, for some unfathomable reason, you are unable to avoid flying the plane/airline combination above, at least make certain that you have your things in order - say good-bye to wife and kids, pay your life insurance premiums and call the lawyer so you can be certain he is in possession of the latest version of your will.
3. Most important of all - never, ever get on a plane that is piloted by a US citizen. They have a reputation of flying drunk, you know - how else would they be able to operate Eurotrash equipment in the first place?

At least now you won't be able to come up with some cheap-butt excuse in case you get on one of those killing machines and die a horrible death - you have been warned.

[wdlove]

They know about a flaw that is being inspected on the AirBus. But what about other planes that have a flaw that is yet to be discovered?

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by Buckaroo:
I ain't going to fly in any Socialist leaning piece of crap.

I'll fly Boeing.

You are right, of course.

Better fly an airplane built on numerous subcontract at prices dwindling down to not much. Maximize profit with lowest quality (aka maximize crap).

[ghporter]

The research and development Airbus did in developing the A300 and similar composite-tailed aircraft was flawed. It did not adequately predict how the tail would perform in the real world. According to Airbus's data, there was no way any part of the tail could fail, yet an entire tail came off in flight. That's a pretty big error, and it has nothing to do with maintenance or flying beyond the aircraft's parameters; the material could not handle a real-world event that should have been very predictable.

Specifics: American Airlines flight 587, and Airbus A300-600 from JFK bound for Dominica, crashed into a Queens neighborhood when the tail broke off. The NTSB cited the cause as the fittings that held the composite tail onto the fuselage breaking out of the composite material. Here's a Washington Post article on the NTSB's report. This crash was in November 2001.

I won't get into whether it was Airbus's fault for designing the tail so that the rudder could cause exceptionally high side forces on the tail, or whether the pilot and copilot were at fault for "agressively" operating the rudder to deal with turbulence in the wake of a 747, but there was significant disagreement between Airbus and the data from the flight recorder as to what control inputs were made and how the aircraft reacted.

As for the Boeing tail failure, I can't find much about that one. There was an Alaska Air MD80 crash in January 2000. In this crash, it was the horizontal stabilizer that jammed, and it has been shown conclusively that the airline wasn't properly maintaining the screwjack that actuates the stabilizer. Boeing did take responsibility for the design in this case.

I'm still staying off Airbus aircraft. I'll take one of those 15 passenger Embraer commuter planes any day. I'll take a DeHaviland 8 pax puddle jumper. I'll take a Boeing 707 airframe that's older than I am (and that's saying something!). But I'm staying away from Airbus.

[AppleCello]

Originally posted by Buckaroo:
I ain't going to fly in any Socialist leaning piece of crap.

I'll fly Boeing.

Right, because anything stemming from a philosophy of people helping other people CANT be good.

[effgee]

How did Corintheus (the elder) phrase that so wisely in one of his more recent musings?

• "Idiocy isn't confined to one nationality."

Were truer words ever spoken, uhm ... written?

[bubblewrap]

Originally posted by DigitalEl:
That's brilliant. Enjoy your Freedom Fries from the aft seat on Greyhound.

Airbus builds great airplanes. So does Boeing... And Bombardier... And Embraer. To "not fly" a model of airplane b/c of one incident is nothing short of retarded. Do a little research on US Air Flight 412, which crashed in Pittsburgh in 1994. What caused it? A Boeing rudder malfunction. Sh!t happens. It gets fixed. Planes keep flying. [/B]

I'm an Embraer pilot.
It's icing that's a problem with them. The 737 rudder malfunction was due to lack of maintenance after they were aquired from British Airways. They were parked in the desert and the hydralic oul varnished up, clogging up a limiter valve.

All machines fail. All of them.

[ghporter]

Originally posted by AppleCello:
Right, because anything stemming from a philosophy of people helping other people CANT be good.

Actually the socialist issue is more in the "make the people think they're being taken care of" mode than true Socialism.

France, where most of the Airbus construction takes place, is now moving toward eliminiating the 35 hour work week in favor of longer hours. Why? Their industries aren't competitive. They have to pay more people to do the same work that is done by fewer people in other countries-particularly the "formerly socialist" countries that have emerged from the ashes of the Soviet Union. The French people demanded less work hours because they wanted more free time. They got it, but they didn't really win. And don't get me started on governmental support of companies like Airbus while the government whines about American farmers getting subsidies that they don't give their own farmers.

I personally would love for the "socialist philosophy" to be well ingrained and universally loved. Too bad it won't happen; human nature is against it. Even Marx said he wasn't a Communist before his death, because, like Socialism, pure Communism is a Utopian ideal that can't be realized in the real world, and neither Socialism nor Communism is proof against the abuses we've seen in the 20th Century. Even truly democratic governments that support Socialist societies are hard pressed to maintain the fairness needed for Socialism to actually work. Look at Denmark and say that it's a perfect system-at least they're trying hard to make it work.

Back to the topic, if Airbus was divorced completely from any and all of the governments that pull the corporate strings, then maybe they'd take responsibility for making sure that a pilot COULD NOT make their aircraft break and crash.

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
I'm an Embraer pilot.
It's icing that's a problem with them. The 737 rudder malfunction was due to lack of maintenance after they were aquired from British Airways. They were parked in the desert and the hydralic oul varnished up, clogging up a limiter valve.

All machines fail. All of them.

And let's not forget human negligence.

A few years ago, I flew on a HS748 with the fuel cap dangling at the end of its rope...

That probably was nothing...

[ink]

Originally posted by Buckaroo:
I will still never fly in an AirBus

Good luck then... If you want to fly into Montery, or other regional-only airports, you will need to fly on an Airbus (at least, that's what I've always flown into Montery).

[Link]

Originally posted by SimpleLife:
And let's not forget human negligence.

A few years ago, I flew on a HS748 with the fuel cap dangling at the end of its rope...

That probably was nothing...

How many times have you seen a car go by with the fuel door open? Things like that are bound to happen, unfortunately.. whoops!

[bubblewrap]

I flew a Piper Comanche 250 that the fuel cap door lock would rattle open on take off and I'd have to go around, land and reclose the door on the wing. Then hope it wouldn't vibrate open again.

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
I flew a Piper Comanche 250 that the fuel cap door lock would rattle open on take off and I'd have to go around, land and reclose the door on the wing. Then hope it wouldn't vibrate open again.

In my case, I told the steward. He said "oops!" and got back to the pilot's cockpit.

I know they plugged it back in after we landed (I saw them), once at destination though. But we did not turn around during our flight.

That company has not gotten any aircrash though in 25 years.

[Link]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
I flew a Piper Comanche 250 that the fuel cap door lock would rattle open on take off and I'd have to go around, land and reclose the door on the wing. Then hope it wouldn't vibrate open again.

Isn't this what duct tape is for?

[bubblewrap]

We call it 100 mile per hour tape...

[glideslope]

Well, I'll fly the Bus. In fact, several days a week.

[olePigeon]

I only fly F-22.

[macaddict0001]

It is possible to maneuver a plane without a rudder.

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
Yeeeeeeehaaaaw!

So what does that make you when you badmouth America and it's products?

You really need to stop, take a moment and pause and think before you post.

[bubblewrap]

Originally posted by macaddict0001:
It is possible to maneuver a plane without a rudder.

Yes it is. It would make for a very ugly landing. The pilot woould have to be very sharp and quick with differentiating throttle inputs.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:

I am surprised the captain was able to land. Wasn't that the same reason that plane smashed into the burbs in NY shortly after 9/11?

No not really. The A300 that got itself smashed into NY lost not just the vertical stabilizer but ripped pretty much the whole stabilizer set off.

Losing the vertical stabilizer is not desireable thing to do but it isn't dangerous.

The A300 the went down in NY in 2001 got its tail broken off by an incompetent pilot. This incident looks like shoddy maintainance. Other than that it happened on an A300 the two incidents have nothing in common.

BTW the incident with the canadian A300 is incredibly old news, why bring it up now?

[chris v]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
Yes it is. It would make for a very ugly landing. The pilot woould have to be very sharp and quick with differentiating throttle inputs.

You gotta have some insane respect for those guys who managed to successfully put down that jet that had lost all hydraulic power a few years back. didn't they do the whole thing with engine throttle and one guy on the floor mashing pedals while the other looked out the window and told him which one to push or something? SOme people died in a very rough landing (I think gear was up) but some survived. Heroes.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
There has been a fatal crash.
The Airbus has a fatal design flaw in the way the vertical fin is anchored to the eppenage(tail). It would require the entire tail to be redesigned with metal supports and the vertical fin to have metal mounting yokes. As long as they are inspected regularly and the delaminating composites replaced, they're safe.

Not a word true here.
There is no design flaw in the A300 regading the tail.

As a pilot I'd have expected you to know that tha A300 is just one in a series of Airbus machines. There are the A310s, A320s, A330s, A340s and now the A380s.

The A300 in NY went down SOLELY due to pilot incompetence.

All planes that are maintained and inspected regularily and properly are more safe.

W-Y

[bubblewrap]

It was not pilot incompetence. There is a fatal design flaw allowing the hydralic ram exceed the aerodynamic forces acceptable to the anchor point on the eppenage. The 737 has a limiter.

And the only time I have ever rammed my foot into the rudder was in an extreme crosswind gust. On comitted final.

There WAS delamination on the anchor. Period.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by ghporter:
The research and development Airbus did in developing the A300 and similar composite-tailed aircraft was flawed. It did not adequately predict how the tail would perform in the real world. According to Airbus's data, there was no way any part of the tail could fail, yet an entire tail came off in flight. That's a pretty big error, and it has nothing to do with maintenance or flying beyond the aircraft's parameters; the material could not handle a real-world event that should have been very predictable.

Specifics: American Airlines flight 587, and Airbus A300-600 from JFK bound for Dominica, crashed into a Queens neighborhood when the tail broke off. The NTSB cited the cause as the fittings that held the composite tail onto the fuselage breaking out of the composite material. Here's a Washington Post article on the NTSB's report. This crash was in November 2001.

I won't get into whether it was Airbus's fault for designing the tail so that the rudder could cause exceptionally high side forces on the tail, or whether the pilot and copilot were at fault for "agressively" operating the rudder to deal with turbulence in the wake of a 747, but there was significant disagreement between Airbus and the data from the flight recorder as to what control inputs were made and how the aircraft reacted.

I'm still staying off Airbus aircraft. I'll take one of those 15 passenger Embraer commuter planes any day. I'll take a DeHaviland 8 pax puddle jumper. I'll take a Boeing 707 airframe that's older than I am (and that's saying something!). But I'm staying away from Airbus.

There is no design flaw in the A300s. "It's not the horse, but the owner".

Yes the tail came off in flight, the pilot tore it off. It withheld much much more force than the Airbus engineers had in fact assumed but the pilot wend way beyond that. I saw a video that showed the rudder movement, the position and speed of the ill-fated A300. It was made from the flight recoder data and the NTSB. I could try and find it again if you won't take my word for it, but the pilot could just as well have ripped the tail off with his own hands. What he did was reckless, stupid and ultimately disasterous. The A300 performed way beyond its specifications.

Airlines such as Lufthansa love the A300 so much they even purchased used models from Emirates.

Airbus planes are a dream to fly. The A330 in particular.

[SimpleLife]

NTSB
Pilot

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 26, 2004__ SB-04-31

NTSB SAYS PILOT'S EXCESSIVE RUDDER PEDAL INPUTS LED TO CRASH OF AMERICAN FLIGHT 587; AIRBUS RUDDER SYSTEM DESIGN & ELEMENTS OF AIRLINE'S PILOT TRAINING PROGRAM CONTRIBUTED

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
I'm an Embraer pilot.
It's icing that's a problem with them. The 737 rudder malfunction was due to lack of maintenance after they were aquired from British Airways. They were parked in the desert and the hydralic oul varnished up, clogging up a limiter valve.

All machines fail. All of them.

" The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the USAir flight 427 accident was a loss of control of the airplane resulting from the movement of the rudder surface to its blow down limit. The rudder surface most likely deflected in a direction opposite to that commanded by the pilots as a result of a jam of the main rudder power control unit servo valve secondary slide to the servo valve housing offset from its neutral position and over travel of the primary slide."

http://www.aviation-safety.net/datab...?id=19940908-0

USAir B737-300 in sep 1994. May they rest in peace.

[BoomStick]

Originally posted by Weyland-Yutani:
The A300 performed way beyond its specifications.

If you can inadvertantly cause a control surface failure, then there is a serious design flaw.

Airbuses are deathtraps.

Period.

[effgee]

Originally posted by BoomStick:
... Period.

• .

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by ghporter:
Back to the topic, if Airbus was divorced completely from any and all of the governments that pull the corporate strings, then maybe they'd take responsibility for making sure that a pilot COULD NOT make their aircraft break and crash.

Airbus is a privatly owned company, it just so happens the owners are EADS and BAE.

Regardless, excluding tha A300 and all Boeings the rest of the Airbus machings are fly-by-wire (A320 through A380) which means the pilot can never push the plane beyond its designed physics envelope. FBW for instance used on fighter jets to prevent pilots from pulling so much gravity that they pass out.

The A300 had not lost its rudder if it were a FBW machine.

I find your trolling against European culture disturbing mr. Moderator.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally posted by BoomStick:
If you can inadvertantly cause a control surface failure, then there is a serious design flaw.

Airbuses are deathtraps.

Period.

The same thing would have happened on a Boeing. Period.

[bubblewrap]

737s have a yaw limiter.
Why?

But I have no problem flying on an Airbus.
Flew (in) them all over Europe.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by bubblewrap:
737s have a yaw limiter.
Why?

But I have no problem flying on an Airbus.
Flew (in) them all over Europe.

If you want to resurrect an old thread, starting a discussion about design philosophies, etc. reopen the old one. As far as I remember it's been settled there. If you don't like Airbus, no prob. Just don't make such a fuzz about it.

[theolein]

What a load of bull. Nationalistic, foaming at the mouth bull. "Death to them Euro sociamalist communamanist" bull. People who conveniently forget the DC-10 engines falling off bull. People who forget a 737's hull blowing open over Hawaii bull.

1. Airbus is a company. They exist to make and sell planes. Nothing socialist about that. They have to turn in a profit as well, just like any other company.
2. Boeing is also a company. Surprise, they also have to turn in a profit.
3. Both companies use hundreds of subcontractors from all over the world. Boeing has subcontractors in Europe and Japan, Airbus has subcontractors in the US.

Buckaroo, your refusal to fly Airbus puts American jobs at risk, or did you think GE gives those engines to Airbus free of charge?

But you're probably ok with jobs being outsourced to China and buying the products of that labour in Wallmart from an employee who earns so little he/she can't live off it.

But whatever. If you don't want to fly in an Airbus because of your irrational hatred of Europeans, fine. You might want to include planes from Embraer and Bombadier as well though, since they come from Brazil (which, SHOCK, has a leftist socialist president) and Canada (which doesn't want to pay for the Star wars stuff, the traitors). You might also not want to fly on Boeing's new 787 since it is partly made in Japan, and we all know what they did in Perl Harbor, right?

[SimpleLife]

Originally posted by theolein:
What a load of bull. Nationalistic, foaming at the mouth bull. "Death to them Euro sociamalist communamanist" bull. People who conveniently forget the DC-10 engines falling off bull. People who forget a 737's hull blowing open over Hawaii bull.

1. Airbus is a company. They exist to make and sell planes. Nothing socialist about that. They have to turn in a profit as well, just like any other company.
2. Boeing is also a company. Surprise, they also have to turn in a profit.
3. Both companies use hundreds of subcontractors from all over the world. Boeing has subcontractors in Europe and Japan, Airbus has subcontractors in the US.

Buckaroo, your refusal to fly Airbus puts American jobs at risk, or did you think GE gives those engines to Airbus free of charge?

But you're probably ok with jobs being outsourced to China and buying the products of that labour in Wallmart from an employee who earns so little he/she can't live off it.

But whatever. If you don't want to fly in an Airbus because of your irrational hatred of Europeans, fine. You might want to include planes from Embraer and Bombadier as well though, since they come from Brazil (which, SHOCK, has a leftist socialist president) and Canada (which doesn't want to pay for the Star wars stuff, the traitors). You might also not want to fly on Boeing's new 787 since it is partly made in Japan, and we all know what they did in Perl Harbor, right?

[chabig]

I drive a Toyota, but I heard one got into an accident the other day. Are Toyotas death traps? Should I switch to a different car?

Chris

[chabig]

Originally posted by BoomStick:
If you can inadvertantly cause a control surface failure, then there is a serious design flaw.

Wrong. Most every machine made can be made to fail by the operator. Certainly your car will go off the side or the road if you steer it that way. Drive it at 50 mph straight over a curb and you'll probably cause some tire/wheel/axle/suspension/frame failure. That's exactly what the pilot of the American jet did. He flew it in a way that it wasn't supposed to be flown. It could happen to any airplane. End of story.

Chris

[chabig]

Originally posted by Weyland-Yutani:
The A300 had not lost its rudder if it were a FBW machine.

The rudder is the only control surface on the airplane that is not fly-by-wire. It has a direct mechanical connection.

Chris

[Busemann]

Originally posted by BoomStick:
If you can inadvertantly cause a control surface failure, then there is a serious design flaw.

Airbuses are deathtraps.

Period.

You seem to be quite the aviator!