NASA to help with Airbus Investigation.
	Vertical Stabilizer    Source NTSB

The National Transportation Safety Board have now called in NASA
to help solve the mystery of how Flight 587 crashed in New York
on November 12, killing all 260 persons on board and 5 more
people on the ground.

NASA will help investigate why the vertical stabilizer and rudder
apparently came off the aircraft.

This structure was made of a composite material (carbon fiber
reinforced epoxy) and NASA's expertise with composite materials
and structures will be required to help determine why the seperation
occured.

The NTSB are planning to move the vertical stabilizer and rudder
parts to NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The aircrafts engines, which also separated from the aircraft
before the plane hit the ground, have been sent to American
Airlines maintenance facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma for examination.

A Safety Board performance engineer is in France working with
Airbus Industries to review the process and procedures to be used
to develop flight load information,which in turn will be used to develop
information on structural loads the aircraft might have experienced.

Examinations by American Airlines of its remaining 34 Airbus A300
aircraft found no defects in any of the tailfins.

Relevant Articles:

Airbus Site Investigations Completed
NDTCabin  22 Nov

New York jet crash investigation now looking at the broken tail section
NDTCabin  14 Nov

New York jet crash engine has a history of failures.
NDTCabin  14 Nov

Images courtesy of NTSB