Flutterby™! : American Airlines Crash 2001-11-14 05:19:48+00

American Airlines Crash

2001-11-14 05:19:48+00 by Dan Lyke 3 comments

There has been some really annoying fearmongering and speculation on this American Airlines crash, both in the mainstream media (way too many bad calls to enumerate here), and in some weblogs (ie: 1 / 2 / 3). First off, engine separation problems are not unknown, in 1979, a DC-10 lost an engine pylon on take-off roll, the structural damage took out the hydraulic system and caused the airplane to crash, and there are quite a few more reported uncontained engine failures. Pigeons have caused crashes of a 737, and seagulls a DC-10. There are all sorts of reasons that this aircraft might have gone down. Justin put together a few of the confirmed damage reports and started the most reasonable speculation path I've seen yet. You'd think the so-called "aviation experts" that keep getting quoted would have access to Google and a brain.

Yeah, that's the direction that Justin's speculation was going. Vertical stabilizer falls off, plane does something radical, engine bolts fail (as designed) to prevent wing damage. If the captain can't see engines from the cockpit, then that comment about lack of power probably immediately precedes a stall and the beginnings of a spin into the ground. Perhaps the earlier request for "more power" was in response to an inability to control pitch angle, but it's still too early to speculate on that matter, and way too early to be speculating about bombs in the wing tanks.

Yup. BBC Radio 4 this morning was saying that AA have started inspecting the tailplanes of all their A300s for possible damage. Certainly sounds like they suspect tailplane failure as a possible cause of the accident.