Pilot actions blamed in '01 crash

WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday said the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, the second-worst in American history, was caused by the pilot's "unnecessary and excessive" use of the rudder. But flawed training by the airline and poor rudder design were major contributing factors, the board said.

The plane, an Airbus A-300, crashed shortly after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 12, 2001, killing all 260 people on board and five more on the ground in Belle Harbor, Queens, New York City. Encountering turbulence, the pilot moved the rudder back and forth to try to keep the wings at the proper angle, pushing the plane into a fatal oscillation, according to staff members of the safety board. The force of the wind eventually ripped the vertical tail fin off, sending the A-300 plunging into several houses near Jamaica Bay.

Sten Molin, the first officer, was at the controls as the plane hit the turbulence, the wake of a Boeing 747 that had taken off shortly before. The board said that he pushed the rudder too far to one side and then overcorrected by pushing hard in the other direction, and that the crash would not have occurred had he not touched the rudder. But the board also noted that the rudder control system on the A-300 was overly sensitive and that American's training methods may have misled pilots into thinking that using the rudder was the only option in that situation.

"It was a unique combination of events," said Ellen Engleman Conners, the chairwoman of the board. Mark Rosenker, the vice chairman, called it a "tragic coupling." Encountering the wake of the plane ahead of it, the A-300 hit one of the two horizontal tornadoes that each plane leaves behind. According to the official transcript of the cockpit voice recorder, the captain, Edward A. States, said, "Little wake turbulence, huh?" to Molin, the co-pilot. "Yeah," he responded. A few seconds later, the A-300 hit the second wake.

"You all right?" asked the captain. "Yeah, I'm fine," the first officer responded. "Hang on to it, hang on to it," said the captain.

The fatal sequence took less than eight seconds.

According to the board's final report, which was discussed in the meeting Tuesday but not publicly released, two pilots who had previously flown with Molin said he reacted too aggressively to wake turbulence. But the report also said that American's pilots might have been left with the impression that jumbo jets like the A-300 can recover from turbulence only by use of the rudder, a problem staff experts called "negative training."