Originally Posted by Steve B.

American Airlines flight 587 had a failure of the carbon fiber vertical stabilizer that was not an actual failure of the material, but the bolts and assembly that held the tail to the fuselage. The failure was a result of Airbus's lack of movement limiting in the steerable section of the tail that subsequently caused the stabilizer to separate from the plane The co-pilot, having encountered severs vortices from a flight that had taken off before them, over corrected with the vertical stabilizer mechanism (itself a result of improper training), and caused the rudder mechanism to exceed design load. Likely would have happened if the tail was aluminum. Nobody ever blamed the use of carbon fiber.