Can air turbulence break off the wings or tail stabilizers of modern commercial airliners?

Answer 1

Depends on how strong the turbulence is.

Answer 2

Actually, a horizontal stabilizer did break off an aircraft...

The official National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report of October 26, 2004, stated that the cause of the crash was the overuse of the rudder to counter wake turbulence[2]. The smoke and fire was the result of fuel leakage as the engines separated from the wings due to huge g-forces, or engine compressor surges.

The A300-600, which took off just minutes after a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on the same runway, flew into the larger jet's wake, an area of very turbulent air. The co-pilot, Sten Molin, attempted to keep the plane upright with the rudder, but pushed the rudder too far to one side, and then over-corrected too far to the other. He was trained to use the rudder aggressively. The strength of the air flowing against the moving rudder stressed the aircraft's vertical stabilizer and eventually snapped it off entirely, causing the aircraft to lose control and crash. According to the NTSB, the crash would not have occurred but for the co-pilot's use of the rudder.

Investigators were concerned regarding the manner in which the tail fin separated. The tail fin is connected to the fuselage with six attaching points, each set has two sets of nuts, one made out of composite material, another from aluminum which is connected by a titanium bolt, however damage analysis showed the bolts and aluminum lugs were intact but not the composite lugs. There were fears that the composites were faulty because they are used in other areas of the plane including the engine mounting and the wings, however examinations of construction and the materials gave the plane a clean bill of health.

Answer 3

Well, have you ever seen how much the wings of say, a 747 flex? They are designed like that for 2 reasons. 1) To support the lift and weight of an airplane without snapping. 2)To go through turbulence without shearing off. Turbulence is merely swirling/opposite moving currents of air. So just imagine how fast that air would need to move in order to snap a ming that could move say, 15 ft up or down. The biggest threat to an airplane that most people would relate directly to turbulence would be wind shear. Wind shear is when one minute the plane is flying flat and leel with a tail wind, and within a matter of seonds, the plane is hit with a huge force of air moving down. Some large plane have been recorded to drop even thosands of feet if hit by a wind shear. Some have even pancaked if they were flying low when hit by one. But for the matter of snapping wings, I doubt that that will happen to a large aircraft any time soon. One more thing, the reasone a small airplane might break apart and not a large one being; small plane's wings don't flex very far, even at all, but a large plane's wing flex could be measured in yards. ;)

Answer 4

I heard of a 747 that was flipped upside down or went into a spiral caused by severe turbulence. the pilot righted the plane and landed. It was some article i read a while back (cant remember the source) from a pilot and why he loved the 747 etc. he said if it had happened to most other airliners they would have broken up. No idea if this is true or not. You also get the occassional story of severe turbluence where planes fall thousands of feet in a matter of seconds from air pockets. The plane will generally survive this but some crashes appear to have no cause and some speculate severe turbulence caused enough damage to cause a crash.

Answer 5

If you consider air turbulence on its own - then we can safely say that it would never be strong enough to start breaking the airframe. However, at certain conditions wind and air turbulence can interact with the structure of the aircraft. These interactions (flutter, divergence, etc) can be highly destructive and can result in the affected part of the airframe destroying itself. This is the same phenomena that resulted in the destruction of the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

Thankfully, wind tunnel & flight testing and lot of brain power goes into establishing the conditions that this is likely to occur, so that all modern aircraft will be free of these phenomena throughout their operating envelope.

Answer 6

Before aircrafts are even sold they are tested like crazy to their breaking point in the windtunnel.
There is even a test of how they are flexing the wings upward to see how much strenght is needed to snap the wings and it is impossible that turbulence can break of the wings because they have been tested and proves that they can widthstand a lot of punishment.

In my opinion doing a steep turn above 60 degrees angle of attack is enough to break the wings because the wind and the speed will make it suffer damage for sure.

Answer 7

There is a structural member that crosses the aircraft from wingtip to wingtip called the SPAR. It's purpose is to give added strength to the structure of the aircraft. It is definitely well put together and there is no need to worry about this coming apart during flight. The spar is meant to flex up and down as you may notice while looking out the window during flight. While sitting on the ground, you will notice that the wingtips are situated below the windows and easy to see. During flight, you will notice that if you look at the wingtips, they are situated much higher in view than they were on the ground, you will have to sink down into your seat to be able to look out the window and see them where they have risen to. This is a good thing. If the spar wasn't there and the parts of the plane weren't made to take these flexing factors into consideration, the wings would snap off and your flight would some to a very quick end.

Answer 8

Well, theoretically, yes. But that would be just about non existant as adverse weather is well tracked and planes can avoid much of it. Most flights are above much of the weather. There isn't anything to worry about. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen that happen. I've seen a few reports of small planes bungling into turbulence and not slowing to "maneuvering speed" at which it cannot become overstressed....and broke up.

Answer 9

It can happen. That is why they try to avoid weather when they can. Although it wasn't natural turbulence but wake turbulence that caused it an Airbus lost the vertical tail a while back shortly after takeoff.

Answer 10

There wasn't ever an incident like this. Large aircraft are well built, also they have weather radars and avoid bad weather. However, there were some issues when small private planes broke up in turbulence.

Answer 11

To answer your question anything is possible but I doubt it. commercial aircraft undergo inspections and continiuos maintenace. The wings and control surfaces are designed to handle far more then they are tasked to do. The only weird case I remember was one aircraft had a section of the fusealge just fly off during flight. I think metal fatigue was blamed on that. No worries mate its dsafer than driving.