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FAA to order inspections of certain A300 tails

'Everything is still on the table. Nothing is ruled out'

One of the engines from AA Flight 587 crashed into a gas station.
One of the engines from AA Flight 587 crashed into a gas station.  


From Kathleen Koch and Beth Lewandowski
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will order ultrasound inspections of certain Airbus A300-600 tail sections as early as Tuesday, the agency said Monday.

The inspections would require the removal of the planes' tail sections, grounding them for as long as two weeks, FAA officials said.

American Airlines, whose 34 Airbus A300-600 aircraft represent less than 4 percent of its fleet, said it supports the FAA's decision.

The inspections are to focus on Airbus aircraft that have experienced air turbulence or sudden up-and-down or side-to-side movements caused by deliberate or inadvertent rudder maneuvers, said FAA spokesman Les Dorr.

EXTRA INFORMATION
In-Depth: Flight 587 crash 
 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued a safety recommendation to the FAA last month cautioning pilots to avoid aggressive rudder usage, pointing out that "rapid, reversing movements of the aircraft's rudder can, under certain circumstances, jeopardize the structural integrity of the vertical stabilizer."

Previously undetected damage

The FAA directive comes as the NTSB announced Monday that previously undetected damage was found during ultrasonic testing of the tail section, or vertical stabilizer, of an American Airlines Airbus A300-600. That plane had experienced unusually high lateral loads when the pilot used the rudder to steady the plane in a 1997 incident.

The NTSB said the damage was found to one of the six attachment points, or lugs, which attaches the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage.

Federal aviation safety officials called the finding "very significant," saying it calls into question the adequacy of visual inspections to detect potential flaws in composite materials.

Another official involved in the investigation said the inspection of the American Airlines tail section and discovery of damage may have averted an accident.

But Airbus Industrie spokeswoman Mary Anne Greczyn said the damage was within the certifiable limits of allowable damage and the plane could have flown safely indefinitely.

American Airlines also said the aircraft's tail section was structurally sound.

"The remaining lugs were able to carry the flight loads they were designed to carry even if one lug was completely missing," the written statement said.

Removing stabilizer from service

Airbus told investigators it will remove the stabilizer from service, the NTSB reported. Both Airbus and American Airlines said this was to allow additional testing to determine how composite components react under extreme operating conditions.

The damage to the American Airlines plane was not detected in the 1997 post-incident inspection of the aircraft, which abruptly veered up and down and side to side as the pilots tried for about 34 seconds to recover from an inadvertent stall over West Palm Beach, Florida.

NTSB investigators determined at the time that the flight crew failed to use the autothrottle properly and did not use other recommended stall recovery techniques to stabilize the plane.

The plane, flying as American Airlines Flight 903, landed safely with one injury.

The damage also went undetected during visual inspections ordered by the FAA last November after the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 in Belle Harbor, New York, which resulted in the deaths of all 260 aboard and five people on the ground.

Composite material

Concern about the integrity of the composite material used to manufacture the tail section of the Airbus A300-600 aircraft involved in the crash prompted the FAA to order those inspections.

Airbus A300s were the first generation of commercial aircraft to contain this kind of non-metal, fiberglass material. Composite materials are also used on military jets like F-14s and F-16s.

Both the FAA and Airbus Industrie had maintained that visual inspections were adequate to detect any failures of the composite material in the A300-600 tail sections.

In January, Airbus officials told the news media they believed ultrasound inspections were not needed to assure the safety of A300-600 tails.

"If the damage is not visible, then it is not of concern," said John Lauber, Airbus Industrie vice president of safety and technical affairs. "It will not grow to the point that it will not meet certification requirements."

Monday, the company said the earlier comments referred to planes that had not exceeded the loads they were certified to handle. The plane involved in the 1997 incident had exceeded those loads, said Airbus spokeswoman Greczyn.

"This is the only one, the only incident that we know of, in which the certifiable loads of the aircraft were exceeded," she said.

Airbus and the FAA are evaluating the service history data for the 91 Airbuses in service in the United States to identify those planes that have experienced similar events as candidates for further ultrasound inspection. In addition to American Airlines, FedEx and UPS operate Airbus A300-600s.

One FedEx Airbus has already been identified.

The NTSB reported Tuesday that Airbus had told them of a May 1995 incident in which a FedEx Airbus "experienced large rudder deflections, but not rudder reversals" which resulted from a rudder trim-autopilot interaction.

As to what this latest discovery, and the new FAA inspections, says about the what happened to Flight 587, one official maintained, "everything is still on the table. Nothing is ruled out."



 
 
 
 







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