I watched the last half of a show on Discovery (or one of them channels)
the other night. It was about that AA flight that experienced wake
turbulence on takeoff from a US airport. Apparently the tail snapped
off, allegedly due to severe rudder movements.

Now, when the A300 is in the ground the rudder pedal can be moved up to
4" to get full deflection either way. When in flight this is reduced to
an inch or so of pedal movement to get the same result.

Now, this has me confused. Given that at low speeds the rudder's
effectiveness is minimal, but at high speeds, ie, in flight, the rudder
can cause significant yaw for little movement. So, why would you want
greater sensitivity in the pedal controls?

Also, they interviewed a guy dressed in a captain's uniform. He said
that up until this incident no-one knew that full rudder deflection or
moevement could result in such a catastrophic failure.

The rest of the show was more or less Airbus attributing the crash to
pilot error, whereas the others said that Airbus withheld important data
that may have avoided the aircraft getting into trouble.

Peelah Ben Arhna wrote:

The characteristics of the rudder control system are discussed on page
144 of the final accident report

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2004/AAR0404.pdf

This is another example of Airbus doing something 'differently' than
the rest of the world's airliners, and then not providing adequate
warning to operators that the aircraft didn't behave the same way (the
non-disengaging autopilot is another one, which cause a China Airlines
A300 crash a few year back, most operators had already modified the
auto pilot before the CAL accident, those that had not, did so in the
aftermath, so the A300 autopilot no longer gets into arguments with
the guy flying the airplane)... Boeing autopilots have never argued
with the guy flying the airplane. You argue, it disengages and the
klaxon goes off to warn you that the autopilot has disengaged (that
klaxon going off was a featured added after the Eastern Airline L1011
accident in the Everglades in the 1970's).....