Corrosion on the incident airplane’s rear quadrant support arm bearings
In attempting to correct an ATR 72’s drift during the landing flare, the copilot found the rudder pedals “almost impossible to move” and the drift difficult to stop, according to the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).
The captain of the cargo flight took the controls, landed the airplane at Belfast (Northern Ireland) International Airport, and de-rotated the nosewheel in order to use nosewheel steering, the AAIB said in the final report on the March 7, 2023, serious incident. Both pilots said that after the airplane slowed to taxi speed, the pedals were barely moving, and that later, neither the rudder pedals nor the rudder itself could be moved.
Subsequent examinations of the rudder control system identified several problems, including “the degradation of the steel rudder rear quadrant support bearings due to corrosion,” which the report identified as the maj…
