That's Not Supposed To Happen

At 35 000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder -- a structure over 8m high -- had fallen off and tumbled into the sea.

It's interesting that this story didn't get wider coverage too. Considering that the A310 is a very popular aircraft, and the use of composites is gaining wider acceptance in the commercial widebody jet business because of its weight to strength characteristics, this is very troubling news indeed.

Also, it is possible that this has repercussions for the investigation into what downed Flight 587 in October 2001. That plane, an American Airlines flight, crashed shortly after takeoff and appeared to have rudder and tail problems.

According to the official report into the crash, the immediate cause was the loss of the plane's rudder and tailfin, though this was blamed on an error by the pilots.

Perhaps, this latest incident will spur a reexamination of the 2001 crash.

The A300/310 is flown by many airlines, including JetBlue, which uses the Airbus design exclusively.

If there is a design defect in the tail, it could mean huge problems for the European company, which has led Boeing in incorporating composites in commercial jetliner design.

UPDATE 11:28AM:
I reread this article, and the following jumped out at me on the rereading:

Despite these and earlier assurances, some pilots remain sceptical. The Observer has learnt that after the 587 disaster, more than 20 American Airlines A300 pilots asked to be transferred to Boeings, although this meant months of retraining and loss of earnings. Some of those who contributed to pilots' bulletin boards last week expressed anger at the European manufacturer in vehement terms. One wrote that having attended an Airbus briefing about 587, he had refused to let any of his family take an A300 or A310 and had paid extra to take a circuitous route on holiday purely to avoid them: "That is how convinced I am that there are significant problems associated with these aircraft."

If pilots think there are serious problems with the aircraft to the extent that they're putting their careers on hold to retrain on other aircraft, it might cause airlines to reconsider their purchases, usage, and maintenance of the aircraft until there is definitive word on the airworthiness of the A300/A310.

UPDATE 1:47PM:
Running a Google search for rudder, Canada, and airbus returns only 14 stories in Google's news search. One would think that this mishap would result in more news than this.