American Airlines' training division had taught its pilots to react vigorously to wake turbulence, and among pilots generally, there was a widespread mistaken b

American Airlines' training division had taught its pilots to react vigorously to wake turbulence, and among pilots generally, there was a widespread mistaken belief that, below the maximum maneuvering speed, it was impossible to do structural damage through the primary flight controls. Now that these misunderstandings have been corrected, we can hope this particular problem will not occur again. On the other hand, I would guess that there is still a risk of people-thrown-around-the-cabin type incidents from abnormally close encounters with wake turbulence, and I do not know if the possibility of structural damage can be ruled out, especially if this were to happen at cruising speeds. I think it is probably safe to say that any structural-risk incident would have been within a whisker of being a collision anyway, in which case the measures to avoid the latter cover the former as well.