WHY did This Aircraft Suddenly ROLL OVER?! American Airlines flight 300

- [Petter] What could cause a fully-functional Airbus 321 to roll over so hard during the takeoff roll that the wing actually hits the runway? That, and what happened after, is what we're gonna cover in today's video, so stay tuned. - [Radio Altimeter] 100, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10.

The story of American Airlines Flight 300 is actually quite mundane. And from a pilot's perspective, that's what makes it both so interesting and so scary. The accident took place on the 10th of April, 2019 and it was on the second day of a two-day pairing for the involved crew.

The day before, the crew had flown the red-eye flight from Los Angeles International Airport over towards JFK in New York and they landed about seven o'clock in the morning. After that, the crew had gone to their hotels, they'd taken a nap, gotten something to eat, worked out a little bit and started getting ready for the second return flight back home to Los Angeles which is gonna take place in the evening. Both of the pilots involved reported that they felt well-rested when they took their shuttle bus out towards the airport again and they got a light snack in the terminal before they met up about one hour and 15 minutes prior to the flight.

Both of the pilots who were flying together were really experienced. The captain was 58 years old. He had a little less than 20,000 hours in total and about 3,000 hours on the Airbus 320 family, the large majority of which had been flown on the Airbus 321 which was the aircraft that they were gonna fly this day.

He was assisted by a 58-year-old first officer who had just over 10,000 hours of total time and about 2,000 hours on the Airbus 321. These pilots had flown together before and they had great professional respect for each other. When they met up for their return flight back to Los Angeles, they started by greeting the cabin crew as we always do and then they started going through the pre-flight briefing materials, their NOTAMS, flight plans and weather.

When it came to the weather, it looked absolutely perfect. It was nice en-route weather, the weather at their destination and alternate was also good as well as their departure airdrome, where there was just a little bit of crosswind expected for their expected departure runway, Runway 31 Left. This was great news for the pilots who were looking forward to a nice and easy return flight back to Los Angeles.

So they proceeded by checking the fuel needed, deciding on final fuel and then sending that figure onto their dispatcher to get the fueling started and then they proceeded to brief their six cabin crew members and all of them went together down towards the aircraft. The captain was gonna be pilot flying for this flight so he did a partial walk-around before he went back into the cockpit and the first officer proceeded to do a full pre-flight walk-around. When he got into the cockpit, the first thing the captain did was to check the technical status of the aircraft, a five-year-old Airbus A321.

And as he was flicking through the technical log, he could see that there was no hold items on the list. The technical status of the aircraft was fine: there was nothing wrong with it. While he was doing that, the cabin crew finalized their safety inspection of the cabin and then started boarding the 102 passengers that was booked on this flight over towards Los Angeles.

When the first officer came back from his pre-flight walk-around, the captain started briefing him on the expected taxi routing, the departure routing and also the technical status of the aircraft. They proceeded to complete all of the pre-flight preparation in the cockpit and then they completed the performance calculation. The takeoff weight of the aircraft was gonna be about 83 tons and with that weight, together with the wind, temperature, weather and runway condition, they calculated that they could use something called flex temperature which is, basically, when the engine thrust is derated as in it's reduced down to the minimum needed for the departure and this is something that we very often do.

On the Boeing fleet, we call it assumed temperature reduction and we do this in order to reduce both the noise footprint, the fuel used and the maintenance of the engines. They also calculated their V speeds for departure where V1, the decision speed, was gonna be 150 knots and their rotation speed was gonna be 156 knots. The last weather that the pilot received included the wind report where the wind was coming from 330 at 15 knots with a possible gust, as in increase in wind speed from a direction of 340 degrees at 26 knots.

So this would definitely mean a bit of crosswind for the pilots which is something that he discussed but didn't really see as a big threat as it was well within the crossing capabilities of both them and the aircraft. Now before we go any further, it's probably a good idea to discuss a little bit about how we pilots handle crosswind during takeoff. A big disclaimer here is that I am not type-rated on the Airbus 320 but I do fly the Boeing 737 and it turns out that the way that we handle crosswind takeoffs is pretty similar.

So first let's discuss a little bit why wind is an issue in the first place. When we fly, we always try to both land and take off with a headwind component. And the reason for that is because, with headwind, we'll be able to maintain the indicated airspeed that we need to keep the aircraft flying at a much lower ground speed.

And with a lower ground speed, the same indicated airspeed, we will need both less takeoff distance and less landing distance. But, of course, the wind very rarely blows straight down the runway, it always has a tendency to come from a slight angle and since we can't change the runway direction, it means that we pilots have to be able to deal with a bit of a crosswind component as we're taking off as well. Now if we use, as an example, the situation that these pilots found themselves in, they were planning to take off from Runway 31 Left in JFK.

That runway has a magnetic heading of 315 degrees, but the worst wind that they were expecting was coming from 340 degrees at 26 knots. Now if that would be the case, that would mean a headwind component of about 23 knots which is great and a crosswind component of about 11 knots. If that wind would turn more clockwise, as into the right, it would mean that the crosswind component would become bigger and the headwind component would become smaller, but the worst crosswind component that they were to be expecting would be in straight crosswind, 26 knots, and that was still less than the maximum crosswind that they were allowed to take which was 35 knots.

Now when it comes to the handling of this aircraft, the pilots were expecting right crosswind which means that the wind will predominantly hit the right side of the aircraft. And if you look at the aircraft, you'll find that, at the very back, you have a vertical stabilizer which is huge and it's shaped almost like a sail. This vertical stabilizer is gonna take up a lot of wind and as it does so, it will push on the right side of the rudder, making the front of the aircraft turn towards the wind which is something called weather cocking.

Obviously, this is not something that we, the pilots, want. We want to make sure that the aircraft continues to follow the center line as we're taking off. So this means that if we have right crosswind, we are going to have to work against that with a little bit of left rudder to make sure that the aircraft goes straight ahead.

Now this weather cocking effect is going to be there for the entire takeoff run but it's mostly pronounced in the very beginning when the speed of the aircraft is very low. But, of course, when the speed of the aircraft is very low, it also means that there's less air flowing over the rudder, which means the rudder is less aerodynamically effective, so the rudder in itself will not be able to maintain the center line. And this is why the rudder pedals that we pilots have that is connected to the rudder and is controlling the rudder is also controlling the nose wheel steering slightly.

So at very low speeds when we're taking off and we have a lot of crosswind, and the aircraft wants to turn towards the right, in this case, we put left rudder in and that is going to turn the nose wheel a little bit. Now as the speed starts building up, the rudder will become more and more aerodynamically effective, eventually it will take over the steering completely. But this also means that as we are doing this initial part of the takeoff, we tend to put a little bit of forward pressure on the yoke or the side stick and that's just to make sure that there's a little bit of pressure on the nose wheel to make it more effective.

So this is why you'll see pilots in the beginning of the takeoff roll applying a bit of forward pressure, especially during crosswind takeoffs but then as the speed builds up to maybe around 80 knots or 100 knots, they will gradually start reducing that forward pressure up to almost neutral. On smaller aircraft, you also have to put aileron into the wind to counteract any rolling tendencies that a sudden gust of crosswind might create. But on larger aircraft like the Boeing 737 and the Airbus 321, you have to be very careful with that because if you put too much aileron into the wind, that might actually cause spoilers to start coming up on the wings and that will cause drag that will decrease your takeoff performance.

And because of that, in the Boeing, we only put a little bit of aileron in. And on the Airbus, you don't put any aileron in during the takeoff roll. However, when you get to the rotation phase, you might have to put a bit of aileron into the wind to counteract any rolling tendencies that you have and that will put you in a condition known as cross controls where you're now sitting with left rudder to maintain the center line and a little bit of right aileron and this cross controls also causes a bit of extra drag and that reduces your tail strike margin in the back of the aircraft.

And because of that, you have to be very careful. Rotate nice and slowly to make sure that you don't tail strike the aircraft. And this can actually be quite tricky.

It takes a while to learn this. And that's also why new pilots tend to have some crosswind limitations, maybe about 20 knots even though the aircraft can take up to 35 knots. On this flight though, the crosswind component was calculated to be well less than 20 knots, giving ample margin up to the maximum crosswind component and it is unlikely that these two very experienced pilots considered it even a threat at all.

Once the cockpit preparation was all completed, the first officer asked for push back and start clearance from air traffic control. They received that and they started pushing back and starting their engines on time. During the pushback procedure, there was some discussion between the pilots about some new procedures that American Airlines had just implemented.

These procedures were implemented in order to streamline the procedures between the Boeing and the Airbus fleet. And the first officer was pointing out that, for example, the trim check had been delayed until later on in the flow from what they were used to before. Once the engines were started, the crew requested and received taxi clearance out to holding point kilo echo for Runway 31 Left.

And because there was quite little traffic at this time of night, the taxi out was really, really quick, but even though it was quick, there was no sense of time pressure or any stress. All of the procedures were handled according to the specified standard operating procedures. At time 20:38, American Airlines Flight 300, received their lineup clearance Runway 31 Left.

When the captain started to maneuver the aircraft into the takeoff position, the first officer looked out through his window and said that it looks like the windsock is a little bit stiffer and coming from a slightly higher angle than what we have talked about before. This would indicate that the crosswind was likely a little bit stronger than what they had calculated but when they discussed this, they both recognized that it was still well within limits. So up until this point, everything looks completely normal but that's about to change and I'll tell you all about that after this short message from my sponsor.

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At time 20:39:48, American Airlines Flight 300 received their takeoff clearance. The surface wind was given as 010 degrees at 17 knots, giving them a crosswind component of about 14 knots. The captain started adding thrust symmetrically up to about 50% N1 and then he put the thrust levers into the flex detent.

The aircraft started accelerating down the runway and the flight data recorder indicates that the captain, early on, made a slight correction with some right rudder indicating that it probably wasn't perfectly lined up with the centerline but needed to go a little bit to the right to get back onto it. As the acceleration continued, the captain started inputting left rudder to counteract the cross-stream from the right as we were discussing before. And he later stated that it felt like he had to input more left rudder than he was used to.

The flight data recorder showed that his inputs varied between zero to 13 degrees of rudder input. The first officer calls out, "80 knots. " The captain responds with, "Check.

" And at this point, everything looks normal. There are no ECAM messages and no warning flags. At time 20:40:30, the first officer calls out V1 and then two seconds later, rotate.

And here is where things are starting to go wrong because now the flight data recorder shows that the captain's left rudder input goes from about eight degrees up to 24 degrees, which is nearly max, within a period of about one and a half seconds. So that means that it's a gradual but very quick input of left rudder. This left rudder input causes the aircraft to start changing direction from a track of 315 degrees which is the runway track to a new track of 290 degrees, which is a hard turn to the left.

The lateral acceleration changes from 0. 11 gs to 0. 32 gs which means a fairly severe sideward movement.

The captain who doesn't realize what is causing this sudden yaw, looks out through the window and sees the edge of the runway come rushing against him. He realizes that he needs to get this aircraft airborne, otherwise they will run over the edge of the runway and into the marshlands beyond, so he inputs full aft side stick. As he does so, the nose wheel comes off the ground and because they're in a rapid yaw towards the left, that causes the right wing to start moving quicker forward than the left wing, increasing the lift on that side, which is now causing a rapid roll towards the left.

Now the fly-by-wire system in the Airbus is supposed to be able to counteract any roll that is created by a yaw but because this is happening so quickly, the computers that are supposed to do this correction does not have time and the roll rate just keeps increasing. This means that, at this point, the aircraft is both turning off the runway and rolling rapidly towards the left and the first officer who is now looking out to see what's going on, realizes this, and without even noticing, inputs right aileron. He does this at the same time as the captain is also inputting full right aileron and right rudder.

And this, the fact that both of the pilots are now inputting on the side sticks at the same time induces a: - Dual input. Dual input. - Warning in the cockpit.

The captain now calls, out "I can't control it! " And that just prompts the first officer to further input on his side stick. Now when two pilots are inputting on the side stick at the same time without anyone taking priority, the computer is supposed to average out the input from both of them, but because both of them are putting full right aileron in, it doesn't make any difference at this point.

The first officer feels that they're still rolling hard and their roll altitude is now approaching 40 degrees and they're still not airborne. The right main gear and the nose gear is in the air but the left main gear is still touching the ground. At time 20:40:36, the maximum roll rate of left 37 degrees is reached and it's at this point that a sound indicating some kind of impact can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder.

This is, however, not noticed by any of the pilots. From this point onwards, the input of right rudder and right aileron is starting to have an effect and the roll is gradually starting to reduce. The aircraft is now pitching up 20.

4 degrees and the airspeed is about 164 knots. And now the aircraft finally takes off. As soon as that happened, the first officer calls out, "Your aircraft, your aircraft, your aircraft!

" Indicating that he's not inputting on the side stick anymore. The captain's control input now starts oscillating between right and left and his pitch inputs are also varying. The first officer calls out, "I don't know what's going on.

" But from this point, the aircraft is slowly starting to stabilize its climb out. As the aircraft is now slowly starting to gain altitude, the captain calls out, "What the hell is going on? " And the first officer responds, "I don't know!

All of the engines are looking good! " Indicating that he thought that maybe they were suffering an engine failure because an engine failure would have those kind of indications with a sudden yaw but all the engines are operating as they should. The captain continues with, "It just freaking rolled on me!

" But from this point, they're now starting to compose themselves a little bit. The captain asks for the gear to be retracted and they continue to climb up according to their cleared standard instruments departure. As they're now climbing out, the captain elects not to engage the autopilot because he still thinks that what they have suffered is some kind of flight control malfunction and he doesn't want the autopilot to be engaged.

He wants to make sure that the aircraft is responding to his control inputs. During the climb-out, the pilots continue to discuss what had just happened in a very dense and upset conversation and the captain even mentioned that it was like a weird electron had the rudder stuck or something. This was likely a reference to the Qantas 72 incident where another Airbus a few years earlier had suffered an incident where a flight computer caused the aircraft to suddenly drop several hundred feet several times.

The aircraft continues to climb but none of the pilots tells air traffic control what they have just experienced. Instead they received several frequency changes and several new altitudes: 18,000 feet, 22,000 feet and as they're climbing out, completing their after-take-off checklist and so on, they keep discussing this and the cockpit voice recorder shows how these two pilots were both pretty convinced that they were about to crash this aircraft as in this was far beyond anything that any of them had previously experienced in their careers. At time 20:43, the captain makes a statement that he says that he doesn't like to fly this aircraft in any kind of crosswind, possibly indicating a little bit of lack of confidence both in the aircraft and in his own crosswind capabilities.

Anyway, as they're climbing out, you can now start to see on the cockpit voice recorder how the first officer is starting to hint that maybe we should think about returning back to JFK. He makes very subtle hints about this, how maybe the captain should think about covering his own ass when it comes to this, maybe he should contact engineering to see whether or not they can give him some kind of cloud cover to come back because remember, at this point, none of the pilots knows that there's any damage to the aircraft. The aircraft is flying perfectly: there's no warnings, there's no ECAM messages and there's no indication that anything really is wrong.

At time 20:45:52, a cabin crew member dings the pilots to try to get their attention. This is about five minutes after the incident, indicating that the cabin crew now likely thinks that the pilots must be out of whatever critical phase they might be in and there is time to let them know that they have noticed that something is wrong. This indicates great training on behalf of the cabin crew because they've waited just long enough in order to let the pilots do whatever they need to do but not so long that the aircraft can climb up too high in case whatever it was that they noticed was indicative of, for example, a tail strike, which could mean structural issues with the aircraft and potential problems if the aircraft pressurizes too much.

The captain answers the call and the cabin crew asks, "What was that? Because that was really, really scary. " The captain explains that they've had some kind of flight control malfunction of some sort but that the aircraft is now fully under control and that they're evaluating what's going on.

The cabin crew responds that she's really happy to hear that and that there are no injuries down the back but she also has some follow-up questions. She asks for example what the rudder does and whether or not they need the rudder when they're going in for landing later on. And this is a small detail in the report but it's something that I think is really important to highlight because it shows a very good company culture.

I really like when cabin crew asks these kind of fairly technical questions because it indicates that they feel that they should ask those kind of questions that they should remind the pilots about the possibility of future problems that might come ahead. And what makes me even more happy is the way the captain responds to that question because he commends her on it. He says, "That's a great question.

We are going to look at how the aircraft responds and how the flight controls respond before we go in for landing. " What this tells me is that it's likely that American Airlines have a quite good company culture, where all of the members of the team feel that they have the ability and that they should speak up whenever they have a question and this is something that I talk quite a lot about in the courses about leadership that I am doing at the moment. When the captain comes back from his call with the cabin crew, the aircraft is cleared to flight level 220 or 22,000 feet.

He continues to discuss with the first officer and the first officer continues to hint that maybe we should return back to JFK and land there? And it's at this point that it seems to dawn on the captain that yes, that is the logical thing to do. We've experienced something very non-normal here.

We should go back. But it also sows doubt in his mind. Why didn't he think about this before?

It starts to dawn on him that maybe he's actually in shock, maybe he's not fit to continue to fly because returning should be the first thing that he should have thought about but it hasn't entered his mind up until this point. He's just been very shook up over the whole experience. And this points to yet another really important thing that I think that this crew is doing really well and that is the ability to self-assess because what this captain is doing now is he's taking a cold hard look at himself and he's asking am I really fit to fly?

Should I continue? Have I done the things that I was expecting of myself? And the answer to that is no.

And he realizes that, and he has the personal strength to actually act on it and that is not as easy as it might sound. Anyway, he continues to talk to the first officer. He says that he agrees and he asks the first officer to please start to coordinate a return clearance back towards JFK.

At time 20:50:05, the first officer calls up New York Control and explained what happened during the departure. He also asked them to get a clearance to return back towards JFK for landing. Now this happened about 10 minutes after their departure and the reason that I'm pointing out that timing is because of another point that I want to highlight and that is the importance of quick communication whenever something happens.

Because what has actually happened here is that this aircraft has experienced a quite severe impact with its left hand wing. The wing has impacted a distance marker on the runway and it's taken out several edge lights on the runway as well. And it turns out that it's actually strewn the debris from that over about a 2,000 feet area over the runway but also over a perimeter road.

Now this happened during the hours of darkness and because of that, no one actually saw it happening. So some external sources that I've been talking to about this story who was actually working at JFK at the time, said that from the time that this aircraft departed until they were actually notified that something had happened on the runway, about 15 other aircraft had the time to depart on the same runway. I wanted to use this incident as an example to you pilots out there how important it is to communicate whenever something unusual happens like a bird strike or something like this so that air traffic control can send someone out and check and possibly avoid any further incidents from happening.

Once the crew had explained what had happened, the New York Controller asked them if they wanted to declare an emergency. The crew discussed that a little bit between themselves but decided that the aircraft was handling well and there was no indication of immediate danger so they chose not to declare a mayday. Instead they leveled off the aircraft at 20,000 feet and now the captain had decided that he indeed wasn't fit to continue to fly so he hands the controls over to the first officer and he takes up the role as pilot monitoring, handling the radio.

The first officer briefs for arrival back into JFK. They decide to use Runway 04 Left for arrival because that's the longest runway and they know that they're gonna be landing slightly overweight but they choose not to go through the overweight landing checklist just because they know, from experience, that it's not going to be a problem and they have checked the performance to make sure that they can land and this is something that, obviously, you can discuss whether or not you should or should not do. But in this case the pilots decided to prioritize a quicker return back to JFK than to continue working on the checklist.

At time 20:54, a cabin crew member once again calls up the cockpit. When the captain takes up the interphone, the cabin crew member tells her that a passenger who's sitting near the wing has reported to her that it looks like the wing is damaged, it looks like it's dented. The captain responds that he doesn't really understand what that means but it doesn't matter because they're returning back to JFK anyway.

And he then briefs the cabin crew about the return. The cabin member acknowledges this and hangs up the interphone but about six minutes later, she comes back and tells the captain that she's been looking at the wing and it looks like there is some kind of damage near the wingtip. The captain thanks her for the information and proceeds to give the cabin crew a further briefing about the arrival and tells them to be vigilant during the landing, and then he makes a PA to the passengers telling them that they've had some flight control problems and that they're returning towards JFK as a precaution.

After this, the aircraft descends normally, following clearances to return back towards the airport. The first officer slows the aircraft down and extends flaps according to normal procedures and the aircraft handles well. He flies a normal ILS approach and at time 21:08:36, the aircraft touches down safely on Runway 04 Left in JFK.

When the aircraft pulls up on stand, the passengers are disembarked normally and the pilots are greeted by maintenance personnel who explains to them that they must have hit something really big. The pilot goes out and are shocked to see that there is some substantial damage to the left-hand wing. The outboard leading edge slat has been filed down due to ground contact and there is a huge dent just below the sharklet where a piece of the distance marker, the runway distance marker is still embedded into the wing.

After further examination, it was also concluded that the left-hand wing had been permanently bent upwards from about mid-span of the wing, causing the left wingtip to be about six inches higher than the right wing tip. And because of this, American Airlines decided to permanently retire the aircraft and scrap it. So what actually caused this then?

Well, the final report was not very detailed when it came to this. It basically concluded that after consulting the cockpit voice recorder, the flight data recorder and Airbus, it seems like it was the captain's excessive use of rudder during the rotation that caused the incident. Airbus went in and examined 270,000 different flights and out of all of those flights, only one other flight had more or equal amount of rudder input during the rotation.

And over 2,300 of those flights had more crosswind than what these guys experienced. So the final report basically concluded that this was down to pilot error but they never really revealed what caused it and we will never really know. Maybe the captain responded to a sudden gust, maybe he was sitting wrong on his chair.

That might be an explanation to why he felt that he had more left rudder than he was used to or maybe it was just a sudden brain fart as he was doing the rotation. We will never really know that. And that's what I feel is different with this incident from other accidents and incidents that I've been looking at where there tends to be a long chain of different causal factors that leads up to the incident.

On the other hand, it seems that once this lapse had occurred, the good CRM training of American Airlines, the robust procedures that the crew had and the sturdiness of the Airbus 321 seem to have jumped in and saved the day and stopped this from becoming a real bad accident. The pilots received some retraining by American Airlines with a focus on crosswind handling and as far as I know, they're now back flying again which is what they should be. This is a great example of how just culture is supposed to work, where if someone makes an honest mistake no matter how bad it is, providing that they can be given retraining and just shown that they have reached the level of competence that they need, they're back flying again, exactly the way it should work.

Now if you wanna see a video where debris on the runway led to one of the most famous air crashes in the world, well then check this video out or if you wanna binge on this series then check out this playlist. If you wanna support the work that I do here on the channel and my team, then consider becoming part of my wonderful Patreon family or buy yourself some merch. Have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time.

Bye-bye.