Another Airbus Rudder Incident

[uwochris]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/03/06/transat050306.html



MONTREAL - Several Air Transat airplanes were temporarily grounded Sunday after the rudder on a plane flying from Cuba to Quebec City nearly fell off. On Saturday, an Air Transat Airbus 310 flying from Varadero, Cuba to Quebec City developed what the airline reported as mechanical difficulty about 30 minutes into the flight.

A spokesperson for the airline said the plane's rudder "partially fell off."

None of the 261 passengers or nine crew members were injured.



On Sunday, three Airbus planes in Toronto and two in Vancouver were suspended from flying until they are thoroughly inspected. All planes were back in service Sunday evening.

The airline sent a plane to Cuba, and the passengers were due back in Quebec City on Monday.

Air Transat has a total of 10 A-310 models.

 

[Texasskicker]

Thats those french planes

Gotta watch out for those dang French planes, always trying to go down on ya. Get kinda funny in the tail, just like those funny francois boyz.

Thats what you get when you make a control surface out of glue and fabric sandwich!

TEX

 

[dseagrav]

Pictures!

http://www.airdisaster.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71606&page=2&pp=10

And geez, these people have great idiots on their forums...

 

[DenverDude2002]

Looks like another quality french product. Watch, Airbus will blame it on the mechanics. they refuse to take blame for anything

 

[A Squared]

Well that is impressive. One comment though, this was a *rudder* failure, the accident over long island was loss of a vertical stabilizer.

 

[slowto250]

Laughed my azz off. A company spokesman said the rudder partially fell off.

Oh. What would it look like if it completely fell off ?

 

[ShawnC]

Laughed my azz off. A company spokesman said the rudder partially fell off.

Oh. What would it look like if it completely fell off ?

Something tells me that the rest of the rudder was removed to be examined, if not I would also like to see what happens if it completely fell off.

 

[wxman13]

That rudder looks like it was filled with particle board. Must be that new-fangled carbon fiber business. Or should I say "carbon fibre"?

 

[C601]

come on....you swear boeing never had any problems with there jets.

If i rememeber correctly the 737 had a rudder problem.

 

[Snoopy58]

If i rememeber correctly the 737 had a rudder problem.

That's what was surmised, but never really proven. They could never get the PCU to fail in the hypothesized mode, until they did some outrageous torture testing (i.e. deep freeze the actuator & then dump hydraulic fluid into it that had been heated way, way beyond what would ever be enountered) ... you can make a WHOLE LOT of components fail when you abuse them like that, and it's no indication that the rudder failed. A botched reaction to wake turbulence (delayed decision to disconnect the autopilot & never disconnecting the autothrottles) is also a strong candidate in one incident, and both some form of mountain wave turbulence and/or a flap failure are possible explanations in another.

The NTSB settled on the rudder as their explanation, but that doesn't make it right, a lot of people don't find their reasoning very persuasive.