The Airbus A330-200 has a "rudder limiter" which restricts the movement of the rudder — another part of the tail section — at high speeds. If it were to move too far while traveling fast, it could shear off and take the vertical stabilizer with it.
SHOOT: Kinda crazy that at close to Mach 1, if you get a computer glitch, you can have catastrophic errors like this. They also say the airbus is almost unflyable(manually) at very high altitude - it's all automatic. So if there are computer errors regaining control is very difficult.
With the plane's data recorders still apparently deep in the ocean, investigators have been focusing on the possibility that external speed monitors — called Pitot tubes — iced over and gave false readings to the plane's computers in a thunderstorm.
The L-shaped metal tubes jut from the wing or fuselage of a plane, and are heated to prevent icing. The pressure of air entering the tubes lets sensors measure the speed and angle of flight. A malfunctioning Pitot tube could mislead computers controlling the plane to dangerously accelerate or decelerate.
Air France said it began replacing the Pitot tubes on its A330 and A340 jets in May after pilots reported several incidents of icing leading to a loss of airspeed data, and that it had already replaced the Pitots in smaller A320 jets after similar problems were reported.
The monitors had not yet been replaced on the A330 that was destroyed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
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