Epilogue

Abstract

In a corner of a hangar at the sprawling Boeing plant in Renton, just outside Seattle, stood something you don’t see every day. A towering tail fin, salvaged from a scrapped Boeing 737, was held firmly upright in a steel frame. It looked like a weird totem erected to aviation technology. The rudder was still attached but part of the fin was cut away to reveal a cavity, within which lay the complex mechanism that moves the rudder. The cavity was festooned with wires and tubes attached to sensors and gauges within it and to pumps and computers outside. Nearby on the hangar floor was a pilot’s seat with a set of rudder pedals connected by cables to the tail fin.