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March 14, 2005

If It's Not Boeing, I'm Not Going

Q: What Made an Airbus Rudder Snap in Mid-Air? A: It's an Airbus

From the Mail & Guardian via Instapundit

At 35 000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder -- a structure over 8m high -- had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside.

One former Airbus pilot, who now flies Boeings for a major United States airline, told The Observer: "This just isn't supposed to happen. No one I know has ever seen an airliner's rudder disintegrate like that. It raises worrying questions about the materials and build of the aircraft, and about its maintenance and inspection regime. We have to ask as things stand, would evidence of this type of deterioration ever be noticed before an incident like this in the air?"

He and his colleagues also believe that what happened may shed new light on a previous disaster. In November 2001, 265 people died when American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus A300 model which is almost identical to the A310, crashed shortly after take-off from JFK airport in New York. According to the official report into the crash, the immediate cause was the loss of the plane's rudder and tailfin, though this was blamed on an error by the pilots.

There have been other non-fatal incidents. One came in 2002 when a FedEx A300 freight pilot complained about strange "uncommanded inputs" -- rudder movements which the plane was making without his moving his control pedals. In FedEx's own test on the rudder on the ground, engineers claimed its "acuators" -- the hydraulic system which causes the rudder to move -- tore a large hole around its hinges, in exactly the spot where the rudders of both flight 961 and flight 587 parted company from the rest of the aircraft.

Next time buy a Boeing. For that matter, for the rest of you, next time fly a Boeing. Airbus has now surpassed Boeing as the #1 airliner manufacturer in the world. Meanwhile, their planes are government subsidized by the Europeans. If Airbus loses money, no one cares!

So what's the excuse for the shoddy planes falling apart, if they're not cutting costs? There's no reward, beyond pride, for selling more planes and making more profit than Airbus. I'm not sure on the numbers, but selling more planes might actually COST the company more.

Either way, you know... if it's not Boeing...

Posted by March at March 14, 2005 12:18 PM

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