American Airlines Flight 587

Introduction
American Airlines Flight 587 was a passenger airliner carrying 260 people. It was a flight from New York to Santo Domingo. The reason why it crashed was due to pilot error, which resulted in the vertical stabiliser detaching from the aircraft and the plane losing control.

Pilots
Edward States was captain of the aircraft, but his first officer Sten Molin was in charge of the take-off.

Take-off and the 747
It's the year 2001, and 9/11 was only two months ago. Most airports now have absolute top security, and it is no different at JFK. People are still worried about their aircraft, but no major hijacking events happened after 9/11.

The A300 is 13 years old, and is one of the oldest aircraft in the American fleet.

The plane takes off on runway 31L, directly behind Japan Airlines Flight 47, a Boeing 747, at 09.14. This means it will be a turbulent take-off. The turbulence is caused by a wake that is given off by other planes. The bigger the plane, the bigger the wake. This means the turbulence will be quite strong as they are flying behind what is known as the 'Queen of the Skies'.

The Crash
After climbing for a while, the plane begins to shake. This is ok for the pilots, as its just turbulence from the 747. They increase speed to the max they can go at that altitude, but that makes it shake more. To counteract this, Molin thinks back to his training when he was trained for this exact situation.

He remembers that using the rudder helped. Turns out, they had turned off the rudder controls for that scenario as they were not needed, but Molin used them anyway. He recovered from the situation, and he thought that it was because of the rudder movements, but it was not.

So he uses the rudder to counteract the situation that he is in, which actually makes it worse, but that pilots don't know that. There are continuous movements of the rudder, which put lots of pressure on the vertical stabiliser. Not only is it dealing with the force of the 747, it's also dealing with being pushed left and right over and over again. The old vertical stabiliser then has to much force put on too it, and comes right off the aircraft. This loss of aerodynamics causes the plane to immediately fall down, as if it was stalling. There is nothing that pilots can do. There is no way out of the situation that the are in, except death.

Before the plane crashed, the engines separated from the aircraft, further dooming everyone on board. An animation can be seen on the right showing how the accident unfolded

May those who died in this crash rest in peace.