NTSB moving tail fin, rudder from Flight 587 to Virginia facility

By Kathleen Koch
CNN Correspondent

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The National Transportation Safety Board will be moving the tail fin and rudder of Flight 587 to a NASA facility in Hampton, Virginia, Monday for closer examination, the agency said Thursday.

Investigators believe the two parts, which were found in Jamaica Bay, came off before the plane hit the ground November 12, killing 260 people aboard as well as five on the ground in the Rockaway neighborhood of Queens in New York City.

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In a press release, the NTSB said investigators will be trying to determine why the tail fin and rudder -- made of a composite material -- separated in flight.

This week, composites experts from Iowa State University, Sandia National Laboratories, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration met with NTSB investigators in New York to examine the tail structure in its temporary storage facility.

The NTSB is moving the tail parts to NASA's Langley Research Center because of the facility's expertise with composite materials and structures used in civil and military aircraft and spacecraft.

Meanwhile, the NTSB says "teardowns" of Flight 587's two engines, which also separated from the plane before impact, began Wednesday at the American Airlines maintenance facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The examinations, under the guidance of an NTSB expert, are expected to take about 10 days.

The remainder of the aircraft wreckage remains in a temporary storage facility on Floyd Bennett Field in New York. In the next few weeks, it will be moved to a longer-term storage site in Harrison, New Jersey.

In conjunction with the U.S. investigation, inquiries are beginning in France, where the Airbus A300 was built.

An NTSB performance engineer is in Toulouse, France, reviewing flight load data to help determine what structural loads the aircraft may have experienced.

A group of NTSB experts will meet next week at the Airbus facility in Toulouse to gather technical data on flight control system operations.