American contests pilot training accusations

An aerial view of the crash scene of American Airlines Flight 587

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- American Airlines is taking issue with two recent reports suggesting the carrier improperly trained pilots to use the rudders on Airbus A300s such as the one that crashed November 12 in New York.

The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine published articles claiming aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus warned American Airlines in 1997 that it trained pilots to rely too much on rudder use to recover from turbulent situations -- a practice that could cause loads that "exceed the design strength of the [tail]fin."

The airline responded to the Boeing and Airbus missive with a lengthy letter of its own, saying the criticism "completely missed the boat … that we didn't teach rudder only," according to American spokesman John Hotard.

That letter could not be released to the media, Hotard said, because of the ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation into the crash of American Airlines Flight 587.

The Santo Domingo-bound airliner crashed in Queens soon after it took off from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 people aboard and five others on the ground.

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The vertical tail and rudder snapped off the plane during flight, according to investigators.

Hotard said it is unknown whether the pilot or some other force produced erratic rudder movements in the final seconds before Flight 587 plunged to the ground.

"We think this is much too early for anybody to be speculating about what happened to this aircraft and what these pilots did or didn't do," Hotard said.

Some experts theorize the Airbus A300-600 could have been caught in "wake turbulence" from a much larger Japan Air Lines 747 that took off just before it did.

American Airlines officials have learned of a similar incident involving two military planes. The engines came off one aircraft, which is what happened to Flight 587.

NTSB experts will meet this week at the Airbus facility in Toulouse, France, to gather technical data on flight control system operations of the A300 aircraft.