From: "Russell Ng" <russng@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 1:29 PM <snip> > > Last December, Boeing dropped its lawsuit against the airline and the > estate of pilot Tsu Way Ming, in the wake of new evidence that rudder > malfunction caused the crash. > > The LA court's ruling contradicts the US National Transportation Safety > Board's belief that Mr Tsu purposely crashed the plane. > > Parker Hannifin has said it will appeal the decision. > <snip> > > The primary points argued during the trial involved the condition of the > servo valve taken from the power-control unit. Found inside it were pieces > of sheared metal that could only have resulted from the manufacturing > process, said the lawyer. > <snip> This whole thing is quite strange. Looking back at earlier reports, I cannot find any mention of an examination of this servo valve. It was said that the cockpit voice recorder ceased functioning several minutes before the flight data recorder ceased, implying that satisfactory records existed for earlier events in the flight, and that these records gave no clues as to the cause of the crash. There is an assertion, in an Australian comment on the jury decision, that the captain locked the copilot out of the cockpit before the crash, but I can't find where the evidence for this came from. It sounds a little like confusion with the Egyptair "suicide" crash. It is not clear how the time of the cessation of these records was related to the time of the crash. It was stated that the descent of the aircraft was observed by radar several minutes after the FDR record stopped, but I could not find anything about how it was established that the three clocks ( the CVR, the FDR and the radar) were synchronized. It's pretty easy to say that if the CVR, the DVR, and the debris show no cause for an accident it must have been suicide; it's also easy to say it wasn't.. In the Egyptair "suicide" crash, of course the CVR and DVR records continued until impact, but the interpretation of them was still a matter of some dispute. Gerry http://www.pbase.com/gfoley9999/ http://foley.ultinet.net/~gerry/aerial/aerial.html http://home.columbus.rr.com/gfoley http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/pollock/263/egypt/egypt.html