Nearly Four Years Later, Questions Remain On AA 587 Crash
Victor Trombettas, the editor for the Website USRead,com, has been following the American Airlines Flight 587 crash into Belle Harbor from the beginning and has spent thousands of hours of his own time and lots of his own money on the investigation.
The following is his Final Report on the accident. The Wave publishes this report a month before the fourth anniversary of the crash as a public service and to point to the fact that many, especially those in Rockaway who witnessed the tragedy, still believe that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report of December, 2004, was a cover-up, especially in light of the upset events, such as the loss of rudders and unwanted control problems faced by some of the Airbus A300 and A310 series aircraft in the intervening years. This is the first part of the report. Part II will be run in this space next week.
On December 6, 2004––more than three years after the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 (AA 587)––the NTSB released the full version of their Final Report on the crash. The NTSB released this probable cause statement on October 26, 2004, at the Final Report Meeting in Washington, D.C.:
The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the in-flight separation of the vertical stabilizer as a result of the loads beyond ultimate design that were created by the first officer’s unnecessary and excessive rudder pedal inputs. Contributing to these rudder pedal inputs were characteristics of the A300-600 rudder system design and elements of the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program.
For those who were present at the Meeting, what the NTSB was really saying came through loud and clear. AA 587 encountered mild wake turbulence. Investigators who participated in simulations of the flight felt the second alleged wake encounter was “barely perceptible,” The first officer, who was flying the departure that day “inappropriately handled” the aircraft and set off a chain of events that led to the separation of the tail. There was no reason for the pilot to react the way he did. His overreaction was worsened by an overly sensitive rudder control system and by some negative wake turbulence training he had received from American Airlines. But had he not overreacted and applied unnecessary control inputs . . . AA 587 would not have crashed.
The NTSB used the words “excessive”, “unnecessary”, and “inappropriate” close to a dozen times in describing the actions of First Officer Sten Molin. Stan Molin, the father of the Pilot, himself a retired airline Captain, was sitting near the front of the NTSB’s conference center in Washington, D.C. He had expected that his son was going to take a large part of the blame––this had been leaked to the media by the NTSB or Airbus almost a month before the meeting. Molin, who taught Sten to fly, had a sense, just days after the crash, that the NSTB would lay the blame on his son. Even though they knew this was coming it was still very unpleasant for the Molins to hear the NTSB say the words –– “excessive”, “unnecessary”, “inappropriate” –– again and again and again –– in reference to their son’s piloting.
The Molins did find some consolation in hearing some of the NTSB investigators (later in the day) state that their son had gotten caught up in a piloting phenomenon called adverse Aircraft Pilot Coupling (APC), although this wording is not found in the probable cause statement. To explain this in lay terms –– it basically means that due to a very sensitive rudder pedal system (never mentioned in the AA training program because Airbus never disclosed its unique nature to the airline), the Pilot quickly got caught up in a situation where, the NTSB believes, he didn’t know that the side-to-side (lateral) forces he was sensing were mostly caused by his own rudder movements. As he repeatedly tried to compensate with the rudder, he made matters worse–– to the point where, in just seven and a half seconds, the tail broke off. Adverse APC implies that there is a design/systems flaw that confused the pilot and the two “systems” are equally responsible in the subsequent failure. But the way in which the NTSB presented their findings, and the way in which they critiqued the Pilot’s actions over and over again, left no doubt in the minds of the major media: “pilot Error” was the cause, and that is how most reported it.
Airbus walked out of the final report meeting with a big “whew” written across their heads. It could have been much worse for them. As one Airbus lawyer was leaving the conference center he stated to a Pilot’s Union representative, “better luck next time.” The Airbus lawyer was referring to intense lobbying by both American Airlines and the Union (even up to the night before the meeting) to get the NTSB to highlight Airbus’ 1997 failure to communicate known defects with the A300-600 rudder system and the role that rudder reversals played in the American Airlines Flight 903 (AA 903) accident. In that 1997 accident, the aircraft’s tail experienced higher loads than the loads placed on AA 587’s tail. American Airlines and the Union firmly believed there was a link between AA 903 and AA 587–– they were pushing and hoping to get the NTSB to see it that way. The fact the NTSB did not is the most obvious proof that the NTSB’s investigation was compromised –– probably by the powerful lobbying by Airbus. This lobbying (by both sides) was even acknowledged by the NTSB Chairman at a breakfast meeting with reporters on January 5th 2005, and described by her as “inappropriate”, “intense”, and having led to a delay of the final report’s release. The Chairman conceded that in the presence of such lobbying the “potential for contaminating the investigation exists”. Is it possible that one party (Airbus) “contaminated” the NTSB?
The family of the pilot, American Airlines, and the union, were not the only interested parties considerably displeased by the NTSB’s conclusions. Many of the victims’ families were dismayed at the findings. They couldn’t believe that they had waited almost three years for a probable cause statement which placed the majority of the blame literally at the feet of a dead man. In the minds of these disappointed people –– the NTSB had failed.
On March 26th, 2004, U.S.Read released an exclusive article titled, Coverups, Foulups, and Credibility Lost . This article was not about an NTSB cover-up. It was about a five year old Airbus cover-up of very relevant safety information dating back to 1997. And it was a cover-up –– U.S.Read’s analysis of the AA 587 docket material uncovered Airbus’ cover-up of the rudder travel limiting system failures on AA903 in 1997. We also discussed the failures of the NTSB –– from 1997 through the present –– to identify and disclose very troubling behavior on the part of Airbus. Most importantly, we showed that even if the NTSB was correct that AA 587’s tail separation was the cause of the crash, the NTSB had lost credibility in determining why or how the tail had separated.
The NTSB could not be trusted to go after Airbus if that was where the evidence pointed. In fact, if one believes that tail separation was the cause of the AA 587 crash, the evidence certainly pointed against Airbus. If the NTSB was unreliable in highlighting the fairly obvious in relation to the tail separation and rudder limiter issues and the Airbus’ coverups dating back to 1997 –– then the NTSB’s ability to determine the actual initiating event on AA 587 was even less likely.
At the Final Report meeting the NTSB proved beyond any doubt that their credibility in the investigation had been lost.
The NTSB basically let Airbus slip away on the most critical issue and even created a grossly erroneous and incomplete presentation that was favorable to Airbus.
Flight 903 (AA 903) in 1997
To anyone even remotely familiar with the AA 587 crash, there was no doubt that the AA 903 accident in 1997 near West Palm Beach was very relevant and very connected to AA587. Most experts who believe tail separation was the cause of AA 587’s crash agree that had the NTSB and FAA been informed by Airbus about the role that rudder reversals and the faulty RTLU (Rudder Travel Limiting Unit) had on the extreme loads placed on AA 903’s tail, the crash of AA 587 could have been prevented. There were such obvious similarities between the two flights, and such an obvious failure or cover-up on the part of Airbus to communicate very important safety information to federal investigators, that Bernard Loeb, who headed the National Transportation Safety Board’s aviation division until January 2001, said the following to USA Today (May 27, 2003):
“When I heard (about what Airbus knew), [about AA 903] it made me sick ... People are kicking themselves.”
It would seem that Mr. Loeb got worked up about nothing –– because the NTSB went out of their way at the AA 587 final report meeting to say there was “no connection” between the two flights –– no “eureka” piece of information from AA 903 that could have prevented AA 587. Even with the benefit of hindsight available to them the NTSB’s statement was very far from the truth. This is why the Airbus attorney walked out of the meeting at the end of the day and told the pilot’s union representative, “better luck next time.” Airbus’ lobbying efforts had paid off well –– the NTSB had been rendered mostly impotent –– and the bulk of the blame had been placed on a Pilot who allegedly used the controls “excessively” and “inappropriately.”