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April 16, 2007
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Sabotage Explains Flight 587 Crash,
Says Expert
Web
Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2001
Powered by
Federal investigators still have no evidence indicating that a benign structural failure
played a role in the tail breaking off of Flight 587 last month, sending the plane
tumbling into Queens, N.Y., according to AviationNow.com.
But as National Transportation Safety Board and other safety experts wrestle to solve
the mystery of the powerful forces that ripped the plane’s fin off and then cast the
engines from their mountings, one aviation expert said sabotage of the aircraft’s left
engine while still on the ground could explain what shook the aircraft to pieces.
Expert Marshall Smith opined, "A single point failure, the in-flight actuation of the left
engine thrust reverser, can account for all three observed phenomena of the clean
breaking off of the tail and the failure of both pylons holding the engines.
"If the left engine thrust reverser had either partially or completely actuated during
flight, it would cause the plane to go into a flat spin to the left. The airplane would
spin something like a flat Frisbee with the right engine pushing forward and the left
engine pushing backwards,” Marshall explained.
"Within a second of the flat spin occurring, the sideways windblast would rip off the
tail assembly, since it was never designed to take such a side blast of air.
"As soon as the tail assembly broke off, there is now very little wind resistance to the
flat spin. At this point the engines would cause the aircraft to spin even faster with
the g-forces away from the center of the spin becoming so great that both engines
would be violently ripped off the wings and thrown outward away from the plane,”
Marshall said.
Marshall’s opinion is that the spin accounted for why the engines were found so far
away from the crash site and why the tail came off first.
Terrorist Scenario
The mechanical engineer, aviation ground school instructor and former NASA adviser
painted this scenario:
During the night, a terrorist saboteur disguised as a ground crew mechanic reached
up in the back of the left jet engine of the American Airlines Airbus and cut the
hydraulic line going to the thrust reverser actuator and the control safety sensor
lines.
The next morning after the jet engines were started, the hydraulic fluid began
dripping from the cut line.
When the aircraft was about 3,000 feet in the air, the sound of an "airframe rattle”
was heard in the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) record. Cause: the tampered-with left
thrust reverser had started to close, causing the plane to turn to the left.
The pilot compensated by applying right rudder to bring the nose back to straight
flight by turning to the right.
The aircraft commenced a "side slip.” During this condition, the burbling air
flowing over the extended control surfaces made the plane shake, rattle and roll,
accounting for the airframe rattle noise heard on the CVR at 107 seconds into the
flight.
The pilot thought he had overcompensated, worried about losing too much
airspeed, and returned the controls to normal. The rattling momentarily stopped as
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indicated on the CVR.
The plane continued to turn back to the left.
Seven seconds later, one of the flight crew commented about "air turbulence.”
the partially closing thrust reverser by again applying right rudder and opposite
aileron. The same rattling sound is heard at 121 seconds into the flight.
Four seconds later, at 125 seconds into the flight, the first officer calls for "full
power,” presumably to compensate for the side slip, which had slowed the plane
down to dangerously low speed.
As soon as the power went to full, the spinning effect caused by the partially or
fully actuated thrust reverser caused the plane to spin out of control in a flat spin.
Two seconds later, at 127 seconds, the CVR indicated the flight crew making a
comment about being out of control. No more comments are made after that, and
the recording ends 17 seconds later when the plane hits the ground.
Fighting to control the aircraft, the pilot held full right rudder and hard left aileron
just as the left thrust reverser came into the full-on position. The application of full
power greatly increased the turn to the left, created a huge side force on the tail
and rudder assembly, and snapped them off cleanly.
Within another second, without the vertical tail assembly to slow the spin, the
plane spun violently to the left about the center of gravity of the airplane. The
plane spun horizontally with the full power from both engines increasing the spin
faster and faster until both engines broke off.
The flight crew at the front was thrown violently forward with such g-force they
were instantly rendered unconscious or killed, explaining why no more comments
from the flight crew are heard after applying full power.
With the plane completely out of control and the engines still running at full
power, the engines broke away ripping the fuel tanks in both wings and igniting
the plane.
Wake Turbulence Discounted
Marshall created his saboteur scenario because he concluded early on that it is not
possible for any type of wake turbulence from a preceding jet to rip off the tail of an
airplane. Furthermore, he concluded, even with the vertical stabilizer gone, Flight 587
would not have gone out of control in such a way that both engines would also fall
off.
He pointed to a 1985 incident where a Japanese Boeing 747 with the vertical tail
assembly completely torn away continued to fly in large circles for over half an hour
before hitting a mountain.
According to Marshall, Flight 587, an Airbus A300, used a modern "fly-by-wire”
computer system and could fly quite easily with complete loss of the vertical fin and
rudder.
"Most air accident investigators would easily conclude that the chances of three
simultaneous airframe failures all occurring at the same time is not probable. It must be
one or the other but not all three. It would be much easier to conclude that something
else actually caused all three failures,” Marshall said.
Marshall pointed to a statement by New York City Mayor Rudolph Guiliani at a news
conference Nov. 14 that the rescue workers recovered 262 bodies including "a man
still holding a baby.”
"Certainly no man can be strong enough to hold on to a baby through that force,
unless instead the plane was in a flat spin. For the passengers in the center of the
plane, the force would have been downward [not forward] as the plane hit the ground,
and the baby would be simply forced deeper into the man’s lap as he sat in the
passenger seat.
Further clues pointing to his theory, said Marshall: news videos of the crash scene as
firemen put out the flames. A large section of the central part of the plane is lying on
the ground almost intact but in flames.
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