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American Morning
NASA, NTSB Look at Flight 587 Tail Fin
Aired May 03, 2002 - 07:40 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Two hundred and sixty-five people died almost six months ago when American Airlines Flight 587 crashed after takeoff from New York's Kennedy Airport. At first, the fear was that terrorists were behind the tragedy. But soon, the focus shifted to where it is now, on the plane's tail section.
Well, today NASA and the National Transportation Safety Board will hold a briefing at NASA's Langley Research Center on what they have learned so far, and CNN's Jeanne Meserve is already there and has an exclusive look at that tail that broke off. She joins us from Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia -- good morning, Jeanne.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. When that tail section was fished out of Jamaica Bay, it was brought here to NASA's Langley Research Center, where they are looking for answers. We are the first people to see it here. Right behind me is the tail fin. Over here is the rudder.
And joining me here today is one of the individuals who is looking for answers. Mark Shuart is director of structures and materials here -- thanks so much for joining us.
DR. MARK SHUART, NASA LANGLEY RESEARCH: Good morning, Jeanne.
MESERVE: What are you going to be able to find out right here with your research?
SHUART: We are working very closely with the National Transportation Safety Board to understand exactly what the sequence of events that caused the failure of this particular structure.
MESERVE: Now, of course, the tail detached from the fuselage, and right here, we see the lugs that attached this piece. Tell me what you are looking for right here.
SHUART: These are the attachment lugs where the tail actually attached to the fuselage, as you said, and there are six of them as you go across the table. And they all look very different, and that's because there is things that we can understand here by looking at the way they failed to determine the sequence of events that led to the failure.
MESERVE: Now, they are all broken, but you don't know if that's a cause or if that's a result of what happened in effect. SHUART: Exactly, exactly.
MESERVE: OK. And we see here very clearly the composite material. We should say that the Airbus A-300 was unique at the time it was put out, because both the tail fin and the rudder were made of composite materials. Explain to me what we are looking at here.
SHUART: What you are seeing here are the actual graphite fibers that come apart from the epoxy matrix material that surround them, that hold them together, and you see lots of different layers. You can see a fabric layer here. But there are lots of different types of composite structure. Here is another one here, where you see a composite scan and a composite stiffener. So these sorts of things are the sort of things that we look at very carefully to try and understand what has happened.
MESERVE: And there are other kinds of composite. Let's step over here, and on the rudder, you see a very different kind of composite construction. Tell us what we are looking at here.
SHUART: Sure. This is what's called a sandwich construction, and there is a very thin layer of composite on both sides of a sandwich core, and you can see that here. And also very easily you can see a lot of that fairly thick core right here.
MESERVE: Now, that skin appears to have peeled back over there. Is that something you are taking a particularly hard look at?
SHUART: Well, we are going to -- we have done a lot of work looking at all of this entire rudder section here. This is an artifact of the actual failure. It was a piece that we know fits right there, and we have tried to assemble everything together as best we can. It helps us understand the failure.
MESERVE: Why are airline manufacturers, airplane manufacturers using more composite materials and less metal?
SHUART: We have been studying composites for a lot of years at the center and working with the aircraft manufacturers. And one of the reasons that they like it is because it's very lightweight. We have also found that there are some very cost-effective fabrication techniques, and in the long term, we think they are easier to maintain.
MESERVE: OK. Mark, thank you so much -- appreciate your help here today. And we are going to have a press conference in a couple of hours. We'll find out a little bit more about what has been happening here -- Paula.
ZAHN: Thanks for that preview. It was fascinating.
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