=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2002/01/02/MN133961.D= TL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, January 2, 2002 (SF Chronicle) Doomed Airbus was in factory accident/While under construction, plane was b= lown onto tail in storm, investigators say Don Phillips, Washington Post The Airbus A300 that lost its vertical tail fin and crashed into a New York neighborhood in November had been blown backward onto its tail in 1987 by a violent storm that hit the Airbus factory in France as the wide-body plane sat outside awaiting final construction, said sources close to the investigation. There is no preliminary indication that the freak event had anything to = do with the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, which killed 260 people on the New York-Santo Domingo flight and five on the ground. According to Airbus sources, the aircraft was carefully inspected after the storm, and no damage was found. But investigators say they cannot overlook potential evidence, no matter how old or remote, in a crash that so far has defied explanation. Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board, Airbus and French authorities shy away from calling the disaster a 'mystery crash,' particularly because they have gathered useful information from the crash site and from the plane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Investigators know a lot about what happened but cannot say why it happened. No one found any indication of terrorism. The engines seemed to check out fine. Weather does not seem to have been a factor. But almost everything else remains on the table, and many months may pass before investigators can confidently determine a probable cause. The American Airlines flight left John F. Kennedy Airport in beautiful weather the morning of Nov. 12, taking off to the west and turning gently to the south over Jamaica Bay. Everything seemed normal. Less than two minutes into the flight, the plane was apparently hit twice by wake turbulence flowing from the wing tips of a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 flying several miles ahead. The wake, two whirling columns of air that are a normal part of flying, was enough to get the crew's attention and perhaps surprise passengers. But preliminary readings from the flight data recorder measure it at only 0.1 times the force of gravity, hardly enough to seriously affect a plane as big as the A300. Moments after the second wake encounter, however, the plane began a seri= es of violent fishtail movements. The rudder, the hinged plate at the end of the vertical tail fin, whipped from side to side at least five times. The ailerons, plates on the wing that control rolls and turns, also repeatedly moved abruptly. The vertical tail fin -- usually called the vertical stabilizer -- crack= ed off when the composite material above the attachments failed. As the plane gyrated through the air, both engines were torn loose, one landing in a back yard and the other in front of a service station. The fuselage and wings of the A300 essentially did a belly-flop down into a neighborhood of neatly kept homes. Investigators are reasonably certain they know the sequence of events th= at led to the crash. But why did the rudder begin its sharp movements? And why did the vertical stabilizer crack loose? Whatever happened in those last few seconds left the crew dumbfounded. Although the transcript of the cockpit voice recorder is being closely held, as usual, investigators describe the crew's mood as 'panic.' The rudder is seldom used by crew members unless they need to steady the plane after an engine quits; it is also sometimes used on landing or takeoff. An automatic device called a 'yaw damper' makes small rudder movements in flight to prevent 'Dutch roll' -- the typical fishtailing as a swept-wing commercial jet comes out of turns -- or to steady the plane in turbulence. Yet investigative sources now generally agree that sharp rudder movements began the crash sequence. That is one reason investigators are paying particular attention to any record of damage or maintenance to the tail section. They determined early in the investigation that before the aircraft left New York, it experienced a malfunction of its yaw damper and its 'pitch trim,' which moves the horizontal stabilizer to keep the plane in level flight. A mechanic reset the computer that controls both tail-mounted mechanisms, and they operated normally, the safety board reported. Then days ago, according to investigative sources, an American Airlines pilot assigned to the investigation remembered he had been in training at the Airbus factory in Toulouse when the storm blew the same aircraft back on its tail. Sources said his memory proved correct. =20=20=20=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle