The European Aviation Safely Agency (EASA) issued an airworthiness directive (AD) on Feb 26th 2015 (adopted by the FAA on Nov 24th 2015) regarding all Airbus Models A318, A319, A320 and A321 stating:
During design reviews that were conducted following safety recommendations related to in-service incidents and one accident on another aircraft type, it has been determined that, in specific flight conditions, the allowable load limits on the vertical tail plane could be reached and possibly exceeded.
This condition, if not corrected, could lead, in the worst case, to detachment of the vertical tail plane in flight and consequent loss of the aeroplane.
To prevent such a possibility, Airbus has developed modifications within the flight augmentation computer (FAC) to reduce the vertical tail plane stress and to activate a conditional aural warning within the flight warning computer (FWC) to further protect against pilot induced rudder doublets.
Consequently, EASA issued AD 2014-0217 to require installation and activation of the stop rudder input warning (SRIW) logic. In addition, that AD required, prior to or concurrent with modification of an aeroplane with the activation of the SRIW, upgrades of the FAC and FWC, to introduce the SRIW logic and SRIW aural capability, respectively. After modification, the AD prohibited installation of certain Part Number (P/N) FWC and FAC.
I'm not sure what to make of this. Was their testing not adequate enough? Do they design overly sensitive rudders in all their aircraft?
Even though it only applies (currently) to the Airbus narrow body fleet......This could be seen as Airbus admitting to being at fault for the AA587 A300 accident in New York back in 2001. I remember the pilots and AA were raked over the coals for it and they changed their training program. I could easily see some lawyer salivating over this.
