Flight 587

The A300-600, which took off just minutes after a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on the same runway, flew into the larger jet's wake, an area of very turbulent air. The first officer attempted to keep the plane upright with aggressive rudder inputs. The strength of the air flowing against the moving rudder stressed the aircraft's vertical stabilizer and eventually snapped it off entirely, causing the aircraft to lose control and crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the enormous stress on the rudder was due to the first officer's unnecessary and excessive rudder inputs, and not the wake caused by the earlier Japan Airlines 747 that had crossed that area. In fact, if the first officer had stopped making additional inputs, the aircraft would have stabilized.[1] However, contributing to these rudder pedal inputs were characteristics of the Airbus A300-600 sensitive rudder system design and elements of the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Training Program.

Investigators were concerned in regard to the manner in which the tail fin separated. The tail fin is connected to the fuselage with six attaching points. Each point has two sets of nuts, one made out of composite material, another out of aluminum, all connected by a titanium bolt; damage analysis showed that the bolts and aluminum lugs were intact, but not the composite lugs. The idea that the composites were faulty caused fear because they are used in other areas of the plane, including the engine mounting and the wings. Examinations of the construction and materials gave the plane a clean bill of health.

The official NTSB report of October 26, 2004 stated that the cause of the crash was the overuse of the rudder to counter wake turbulence.[2] The smoke and fire resulted from fuel leakage as the engines separated from the wings due to huge g-forces, or engine compressor surges.