On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 12:48:54 -0500, nobody wrote:



Could a fault in the hydrolics cause the rudder to deflect to max
position on one side at high speed ? If this were to happen, and the
pilot didn'T have his feet on the rudder pedals, if it fair to state the
the pilot woudln't have any feedback that this happened ?

There was a good (non-sensational) TV documentary about this incident.
It claimed that the a/c hit turbulence from a previous departure and
did, indeed, try to control the situation by several consecutive
opposite full rudder deflections. The controversy was that at the time
this was fine according to the operator, who tried to blame Airbus
because of what happened.

As part of the investigation someone did the sums to see what forces
would be present in such circumstances and, guess what, it turned out
that it would break not only a modern composite rudder but also a
conventional metal one.