American Airlines Flight 587

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**American Airlines Flight 587**
Summary
Date	November 12, 2001
Type	In-flight structural failure
Site	Queens, New York City
Fatalities	265 (including 5 on the ground)
Injuries	1
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Airbus A300-600
Operator	American Airlines
Tail number	N14053
Passengers	251
Crew	9
Survivors	0

American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens in New York City shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on November 12, 2001. This was the second deadliest U.S. aviation accident to date.

1 Synopsis
2 Investigation
3 Responsibility
4 Memorial
5 Miscellaneous
6 TV
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Synopsis

On November 12, 2001, about 0916:15 eastern standard time, American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus Industrie A300-605R, N14053, crashed into a residential area of Belle Harbor, New York, shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, Jamaica, New York. Flight 587 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight to Las Americas International Airport, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with 2 flight crewmembers, 7 flight attendants, and 251 passengers aboard the plane. The plane’s vertical stabilizer and rudder separated in flight and were found in Jamaica Bay, about 1 mile north of the main wreckage site. The plane’s engines subsequently separated in flight and were found several blocks north and east of the main wreckage site. All 260 people aboard the plane and 5 people on the ground were killed, and the plane was destroyed by impact forces and a postcrash fire. Flight 587 was operating under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 121 on an instrument flight rules flight plan. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident.

[edit] Investigation

After the crash, Floyd Bennett Field's empty hangars were used as a makeshift morgue for the identification of crash victims.^[1]

The official National Transportation Safety Board (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 was the result of fuel leakage as the engines separated from the wings due to huge g-forces, or engine compressor surges.

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 the rudder. 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.

Investigators were concerned regarding the manner in which the tail fin separated. The tail fin is connected to the fuselage with six attaching points, each set has two sets of nuts, one made out of composite material, another from aluminum which is connected by a titanium bolt, however damage analysis showed the bolts and aluminum lugs were intact but not the composite lugs. There were fears that the composites were faulty because they are used in other areas of the plane including the engine mounting and the wings, however examinations of construction and the materials gave the plane a clean bill of health.

[edit] Responsibility

Airbus and American are currently disputing the extent to which the two parties are responsible for the disaster. American charges that the crash was mostly Airbus's fault, because the A300 was designed with unusually sensitive rudder controls. Most aircraft require increased pressure on the rudder pedals to achieve the same amount of rudder control at a higher speed. The Airbus A300 and later A310 do not operate on a fly-by-wire flight control system, instead using conventional mechanical flight controls. The NTSB determined that "because of its high sensitivity, the A300-600 rudder control system is susceptible to potentially hazardous rudder pedal inputs at higher speeds."^[3]

Airbus charges that the crash was mostly American's fault, because the airline did not train its pilots properly about the characteristics of the rudder. Aircraft tail fins are designed to withstand full rudder in one direction at maneuvering speed. However, they are not usually designed to withstand an abrupt shift in rudder from one direction to the other. Most American pilots believed that the tail fin could withstand any rudder movement at maneuvering speed.

[edit] Memorial

A memorial was constructed in Belle Harbor, in memory of the 265 victims of the crash, at Beach 116th Street, a major commercial area in the community.^[4] The memorial was dedicated on November 12, 2006, the fifth anniversary of the incident, in a ceremony attended by Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg. The memorial wall, designed by Dominican artist Freddy Rodriguez and Situ Studio, has windows and a doorway looking towards the nearby Atlantic Ocean and angled towards the Dominican Republic. The Memorial is inscribed with the names of the victims.^[5] Atop the memorial is a quote, in both Spanish and English, from Dominican poet Pedro Mir, reading "Despues yo quiero no mas que paz / Afterwards I want only peace."^[6]

[edit] Miscellaneous

Flight 587 no longer exists. The flight route designation of flights between Kennedy Airport and Las Americas Airport now are under Flight 619, Flight 635, and Flight 789.
Not only was this the second American Airlines jet to crash after takeoff from JFK, but the second to crash from rudder-related problems. On March 1, 1962, American Airlines Flight 1, a Boeing 707-123, crashed into Jamaica Bay, killing all 95 onboard, after a wiring fault in the rudder caused uncommanded rudder deflection, resulting in loss of control.
On May 12, 1997, about 1529 eastern daylight time, an Airbus A300B4-605R, N90070, flight 903, registered to Wilmington Trust Company Trustee, operated by American Airlines Inc., as a 14 CFR Part 121 scheduled domestic passenger flight, experienced an inflight loss of control, about 10 miles north of HEATT intersection in the vicinity of West Palm Beach, Florida. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed and an IFR flight plan was filed. The airplane sustained minor damage. The airline transport pilot-in-command (PIC), commercial pilot first officer, 6 flight attendants, and 155 passengers sustained no injuries. One passenger sustained serious injuries, and one flight attendant received minor injuries. The flight originated from General Edward Lawrence Logan International Airport, Boston, Massachusetts, about 2 hours 16 minutes before the accident. According to American Airlines safety personnel, the PIC stated the cabin seatbelt signs were illuminated, and they were level at 16,000 feet. They had received an air traffic control (ATC) clearance to hold at HEATT intersection located southeast of West Palm Beach. Weather was depicted in the vicinity of the holding fix on the weather radar. They requested and received clearance from ATC to hold north of the holding fix. As they were approaching the holding fix, they encountered a loss of control. The airplane pitched up and down, rolled to the left and right, and descended rapidly. The flightcrew initiated the "Escape" procedure and recovered the airplane. The PIC was advised of passenger injuries by the flight attendants. He declared an emergency with ATC and landed at Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida, without further incident.
On November 27, 1998, a Korean Airlines Airbus A300-600 experienced an inflight thrust reverser activation. The incident is being investigated by the government of Indonesia.
On March 6, 2005, on an Air Transat flight en route from Cuba to Quebec City, using an Airbus A310-300 with 9 crew and 261 passengers on board, most of the rudder separated during the cruise. The crew became aware of the problem and returned to Varadero, Cuba, where they made a safe landing. The reason for the rudder structural failure is still under investigation. It has been established that no unusual rudder inputs had been used by the crew during the flight, they were not manipulating the rudder when it failed and there was no obvious fault in the rudder or yaw-damper system.
Had the New York Yankees won Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, infielder Enrique Wilson would have flown home to the Dominican Republic and been aboard American Airlines Flight 587^[7]. Mariano Rivera claims that he is glad that he blew the save in the bottom of the ninth because he now still has a friend.
One of the passengers killed on the flight was Hilda Yolanda Mayol, a 26-year-old woman on her way to vacation in her native Dominican Republic. Two months earlier, on September 11, Mayol had been working at a restaurant on the ground floor of the World Trade Center, and had escaped before the building collapsed.^[8]

[edit] TV

The BBC program Horizon did an episode on the crash.
An episode of the National Geographic Channel program Seconds From Disaster, first aired on September 6, 2006, examined the Flight 587 accident in detail. The episode was titled Plane Crash in Queens (also known as New York Air Crash).^[9]