Less than an hour after the crash investigators are rushing. The head of this investigation, Bub Benzon of the NTSB, has handled over 94 investigations including the Pan Am Lockerbie crash. Both of the engines broke of before the actual body of the plane landed. They see the tail fin, rudder that had come of.
Without a tail fin a plane cannot fly. The fin was found on the waters of Jamaica Bay 1.5 kilometers away from the main crash site. This means the accident might have been caused by this. The citizens thought it was a bomb providing solid evidence.
The FBI tries to look for the bomb, and another key piece, the Black Box. This might takes weeks and even then they might be badly damaged. Just an hour into the Search, the NTSB announce that they have found the Black Box. After this they announce that there was no suspicious behaviour at the airport, concluding that it was likely not a planned attack.
89 seconds into the tape they hear a chilling bang then the crew can be heard struggling. For two days investigators look for the Flight Data Recordings. Instead of in that area, the next clue came from three kilometers away. There was a CCTV footage of the plane and crucially, there was a white trail of smoke behind it. This could be hard evidence that it was a Bomb. The only way to find out if it is, is to compare the time.
The results came out and it was found out this was not a bomb as it was 8 seconds after the first accident. It was probably the fuel exploding after the plane started to break.
Back at the Crash Landing site the Investigators find the Flight Data Recording Box. However the Box is damaged so they send the Box to the People that made it to see if they can find anything. The Tail Fin that was found was likely to have come off all the 6 joints holding it down.
Investigators realise the thing that they joints were made of Reinforced Carbon Fibre Composite. However, there has never been a plane crash because of Composite failure, but at this point they cannot rule anything out, the Chief Investigator Bob Benzom starts to think that the Composites might’ve given way. This is a major problem as 1000 other planes use the same technology and 250 planes are made of the exactly the same material. Pressure is falling on Benzom’s team and even Airbus, was there a design fault? NASA and NTSB scientists scanned every bit of the Airbus plane but there was no faults.
The flight data recorder shows a whole different picture. A different picture that changed the way people looked at the investigation. People looked away from the actual aircraft and started to look at Co-Pilot Sten Molin. It showed that he moved the rudder 5 times causing the plane to move side-to-side vigorously which eventually led to the tail coming off after the 5th movement.
They do not have evidence to show that it actually came off because of this. Many other pilots actually saw this as impossible. The investigators needed to find out why Sten Molin Would’ve done this. It could’ve been because of weight turbulence a force which could turn a plane upside down if they even passed it, however the team find out the plane was too big to have any serious impact.
It was said by one of Molin Colleagues he would aggressively move the rudder in turbulence. So where did he pick this dangerous technique from? American Airlines. Apparently he was told to do this in turbulence by the airline. This was confirmed by the Airlines. Airbus had already told the airline that this was not good. American airlines went to court but claimed Airbus had not told them the limits of the rudder. The rudder sensitivity is not explained in the Aircraft’s manual put out by Airbus.
The NTSB can now see what happened to the plane:
- After a Japanese Airline takes off American are given a warning about Weight turbulence
- Then the flight takes off.
- The flight encounters turbulence for the first time
- More turbulence in a bigger wave comes causing the plane to tilt left, Molin does what his training said to do by moving the rudder
- When the rudder moves it applies a lot of pressure to the fin at the 6th time Sten Molin stamped on the pedal the tail fin broke off.
- The flight falls from the sky making 256 people die
Children's Chronicles 