XPost: alt.disasters.aviation, rec.aviation.piloting, rec.travel.air 
 XPost: rec.travel.usa-canada 
 From: here@mylittlewhitehouse.com 
  
 On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:51:45 GMT, Pete  wrote: 
 >> But Molin didn't know he was putting more pressure on the tail than 
 >> it could bear. Why he didn't -- and who's to blame for that -- is the 
 >> subject of a bitter fight between Airbus and American. 
 > 
 > I thought that was one of the main advantages of fly-by-wire systems, 
 > to eliminate truly stupid actions of pilots.  Sounds like Airbus shares 
 > a lot of blame for the crash.  It's like an auto maker made a car that 
 > sheared off its wheels if the steering wheel was turned too quickly, 
 > and the maker's response was to tell drivers, "Don't do that!" 
  
    Ummmmmm... so what exactly do you think will happen to a car if you 
 turn the wheel rapidly while driving at more than a snail's pace?  I'll 
 give you a hint - you'll get the opportunity to find out either how 
 expensive it is to replace your suspension, CV joints, etc, or how 
 well your roof supports the weight of the car after it has flipped. 
 Probably you'll discover all of those. 
  
    "Don't do that" is a perfectly reasonable approach.  You can't 
 make everything infinitely strong.  From what I've read, 
 it wasn't the first officer's fault, really - he did exactly 
 what he was trained to do.  Unfortunately, his training was 
 wrong. 
  
 - Rich 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)