FAA to Airbus: Install rudder warning after fatal crash

Bart Jansen, USA TODAY | USATODAY

The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered aircraft maker Airbus to update the rudder systems on 215 of its planes because of a fatal 2001 crash, but some industry officials question the remedy, and safety experts wonder why it took so long.

The FAA rule was finalized almost exactly 11 years after the fiery crash of American Airlines flight 587 in Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 12, 2001. The crash occurred soon after take-off from New York's JFK airport, when the Airbus A300-605R's tail came apart. All 260 on the plane were killed, as were five people on the ground.

The National Transportation Safety Board found that the plane's tail fin -- the vertical stabilizer -- tore off because the pilot put too much stress on the rudder by flipping it from side to side as he fishtailed in the wake of another plane. A half-dozen other flights have suffered problems with rudder movement causing high stress on tails, but without catastrophic results.

The board blamed the crash on the pilot's "unnecessary and excessive rudder" movement, which is controlled by foot pedals. But American pilots were trained at the time to use the rudder to deal with wake turbulence, so training changed across the industry in the years after the crash.

Now, the FAA has worked with the counterparts at the European Aviation Safety Agency and Airbus to install a flashing light and sound in the cockpit to warn against excessive rudder movement on A300 and A310 planes.

The FAA estimates the update will cost $72,720 to $107,720 per plane. Another option the FAA approved, which would cost $198,500 per plane, is to install equipment limiting movement of the rudder pedal.

Airbus has warned there's "no realistic" way to design and install the pedal equipment within the four years that FAA has ordered. But Airbus won FAA certification of its warning system in March.

"Airbus already has service bulletins available for airplane operators to incorporate this new warning system into their fleet," the FAA said.

Airbus says the goal of the warnings is to stop a pilot from making the wrong movements rather than trying to minimize the consequences. A spokeswoman denies that cost came first in making decisions about safety.

"We believe it is more appropriate to stop wrong inputs rather than counter them mechanically," says the spokeswoman, Mary Anne Greczyn.

NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman has said "a warning light alone will not rectify the unsafe condition." She also says "it is unfortunate" that no design changes are available for airlines for more than a decade.

Wil Angelley, a former six-year Navy pilot and now a Dallas aviation lawyer, compares the pedal device to the anti-lock brakes in a car that prevent a driver from stomping down too hard. Airlines will have to decide whether to install that as the safest course or the warning light at one-third the cost, he says.

"What's a little exasperating for me is that it took 11 years," Angelley says.

The FAA says development of the warning system followed years of other actions from the agency, its European counterparts and the industry. Other steps included improving flight manuals, increasing training and updating FAA rules about misconceptions with rudder use.

Two of the plane's bigger customers, delivery companies FedEx and UPS, each plan to comply with the rule by installing warning lights, but they disagreed about the need for the rule.

"FedEx continues to believe that proper rudder control in response to wake turbulence is most effectively addressed through pilot education and training," says Maury Donahue, a spokeswoman for the company with 106 of the targeted planes.

UPS, which has 53 of the planes, initially expressed concern about the cost of installing pedal equipment. But the company says installing a flashing light and its software could be done within the four years that the FAA allows.

"UPS Airlines places the utmost value on safety and takes regulatory compliance very seriously," says spokesman Mike Mangeot.

The Air Line Pilots Association also supported the rule, focusing on better rudder training for pilots while continuing to evaluate pedal sensitivity.

The plane wasn't blamed in the crash because the NTSB found stress on the tail was almost twice as much as it was certified to endure. Airbus had warned that "only a small amount of rudder is needed" and that "too much rudder applied too quickly or held too long" could result in "structural failure."

"The airplane was put in a position well beyond what it was designed and required by the FAA to do," says John Cox, a former commercial pilot who is an aviation-safety expert as president of Safety Operating Systems. "This is not a first-time event. It is not specific to Airbus."

Cox says, however, that he would like to see FAA safety rules developed faster.

The NTSB investigation of the American crash found three other incidents involving A300-600 planes and three involving A310 aircraft in which excessive stress on the tails was blamed on use of the rudder pedal. The board singled out two that featured enough rudder movement to break the tail:

-- One passenger was seriously injured in May 1997, when an American Airlines flight stalled while banking to land at Miami airport. The crew ultimately stabilized the flight.

--Nobody was injured in February 1991, when a German Interflug flight aborted a landing in Moscow because of a blocked runway, then stalled repeatedly as it circled before landing safely.