Scotsman.com News – Latest News – Co-Pilot Blamed for 265-Death Crash

Airbus Industries, which manufactured the airliner, and American Airlines, which trained Mr Molin, agree that if he had taken his foot off the rudder pedal, the tail would not have broken off.

But the airline claims that Airbus did not warn of the dangers of using the rudder in such a manner.

It also alleges that the Airbus A300-600 has uniquely sensitive flight controls that can cause more severe rudder movements than the pilot intends.

Yeah, right, pilot error. Sounds like an engineering defect to me.



  1. Anonymously says:

    I think, generally speaking, nothing should fall off of a plane unless it hits something. Blaming this on the co-pilot doesn’t seem quite right.

  2. Dan Collins says:

    There are a lot of witnesses that say they saw the plane explode.

  3. Mike Voice says:

    …being built by countries who are incapable of controlling Muslim extremists within their borders.

    Like the U.S. (9/11) or Spain (Madrid bombings) were incapable of controlling extremists inside their borders?

  4. Neil says:

    There’s a bit more to the story than made the papers.

    It’s true that the tail of the Aerobus did fall off because the co-pilot was kicking the rudder pretty hard. Therefore, the “pilot error” finding.

    The Aerobus was on takeoff when it was caught by wake turbulence from the 747 ahead of it. Nasty stuff that. Like flying into a pair of horizontal whirlpools. The crew was trying to keep the plane under control.

    But, and there’s a big BUT, the tail of a plane really isn’t meant to fall off just because you kick hard left or right rudder.

    BY FAA regulations, a plane must be designed and flite tested so that if you’re flying along straight and kick hard -sudden and full- left rudder, the tail just swings over but does not fall off. The same requirement when flying with the tail is as far left as it can go. Kick opposite rudder and the tail swings back but still does not fall off.

    So far,so good. The Aerobus, just like any big jet airliner can handle this. But, and here’s the big BUT, if you hit hard left ruddder, and while the tail is still swinging over, (“Backfield in motion”, so to speak), then go opposite hard rudder, the tail of this particular model Aerobus does fall off.

    I’ll try again. No matter how the plane is cocked, as long as it’s
    steady state, you can’t get in trouble with the rudder. But for this one model Aerobus. if the tail is still swinging one way, and you try to reverse, “Oh shit.”

    This gotcha wasn’t anticipated or covered in the regulations, design, testing, manuals or pilot training. Lots of wings have been pulled of lots of planes,especially way back when. The tail fell off? That’s a new one.

    About a year after the accident, some people, academics if I remember right, did computer simulations and saw what happened. McGraw Hill’s well respected “Aerospace Weekly” had a very nice and long write up on it.

    Personaly, Id hang it on Aerobus, not a dead co-pilot.

    OLD RULE:

    When in doubt
    Build it stout
    Out of things
    You Know about.


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