A Superb Piece Of Aircraft Engineering Or Superb Pilot Skills?

Question

An Airbus A330 Flight from Canada lost almost all of its fuel about 300 miles from landing in Portugal. 150 approx miles from landing, it had lost all engine power. The Pilots decided to divert to the nearest airport on an Island, they flew the Jet on auxilliary power "gliding" all the way & landed on the airport runway bursting all the tyres as they landed. All the 200+ passengers & crew got off safely ! "Superb Aircraft" or "Super Pilot Skills", your comments please !

Answer 1

Complex answer

Superb pilot skill with respect to him getting the aircraft on the ground.

Very poor pilot skills when it came to managing the problem, resulting in him losing all the fuel in the first place!!!

Flight manual that didn't cover this particular failure didn't help, but the pilot did not adequately monitor the situation until it was too late.

Aircraft met all the newest safety requirements, and therefore was capable of flying in that state having lost all thrust and generated electrical power.

They were very very lucky.

The sickening thing is the pilot was hailed as a hero, got a book deal, received an award from Quebec. He should have been demoted and retrained.period.

Answer 2

Superb piloting? Makes me laugh. They incorrectly diagnosed a fuel leak as something else, and turned on an electrical fuel pump to pump fuel INTO the tank with a leak in it, thereby dumping all their fuel into the north atlantic. Only after the engines inevitable flames out due to fuel exhaustion did they even start to act like real pilots and glide the aircraft to a suitable landing field.

The problems all started when they noticed on of their collector tanks was showing low fuel quantity. Airbus's manual says than when a collector tank is empty, you pump fuel into it to fill it up again because the fuel pump supplying it has failed. However they did not verify that the pump had failed and instead assumed that it was simply a sensing error, and that the tank was in fact full. They turned on the auxiliary pump as a precaution and forgot about it. They did not monitor their fuel flow and notice that now all af their tanks were becoming low. They didnt even think for a second that the problem could be anything worse than a sensing error.

At the flight school I did my trainig we had a large plaque on the wall that read:

"A superior pilot is one who uses superior judgment to avoid sutuations that require the use of superior skill"

These guys should have read that

Answer 3

I don't think that either of your choices are really appropiate. Let me explain.

All airliners are required to be able to operate their flight controls in the event of the loss of all engines. This is due to Code of Federal Regulations paragraph 25.671(d) which reads:

"The airplane must be designed so that it is controllable if all engines fail. Compliance with this requirement may be shown by analysis where that method has been shown to be reliable."

Linked here:
http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&sid=8eac3c566eeac5889defe774f1b3010e&rgn=div8&view=text&node=14:1.0.1.3.11.4.174.17&idno=14

With these little words as a requirement, major aircraft systems are required to be foolproof, even if the fool dumps fuel from a full tank to the tank that already leaked out its content. The aircraft cannot be sold by the manufacturer unless it can demonstrate that it meets this requirement (and quite a few others).

Consider that the A330 has a fully powered set of flight controls meaning that the pilots must still be able to control the aircraft without the main power sources. This requires quite a bit of complexity and ingenuity. This all being said, the Airbus is no more superb than any other Part 25 aircraft under current regulations, and it is not the only case of a nonfatal incident with complete engine loss.

As for those pilots, Air Transat flight 236 had clear weather. As I understand it, the pilot was a glider pilot in his free time, so that helped him in the situation, but I wouldn't call his flying superb except for the trick landing. He couldn't have asked for nicer weather or a better way to control what he had left of the aircraft(all axis were controllable through the flight control systems, though in a reduced capacity).

Air Transat flight 236:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20010824-1&lang=en

I think the Sioux City crash showed in the most dramatic way what Superb Piloting means. It is being able to make the plane do something it wasn't meant to do and save lives in the process. Those pilots brought the plane down without any flight controls using only the two remaining engines to maneuver. Though the aircraft did impact and burn, their actions saved half the passengers when all were thought dead. More recently DHL pilots were hit with a SAM while climbing from Baghdad, blowing out a chunk of the wing, starting a fuel fire, severing their hydraulic systems and knocking out all flight controls. They brought it back with engines only and landed it on its gear (followed by a little diversion off the runway)-- that's superb piloting.

Sioux City:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19681227-1&lang=en

Baghdad:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20031122-0

Answer 4

As I recall reading the report on this incident, the leaking fuel problem was aggravated by incorrect transfering of fuel after the leak was first noticed. This resulted in a MUCH quicker loss of fuel than if the correct procedure had been followed.

While the pilots showed the "right stuff" by gliding the liner to a successful landing, their skills wouldn't have been put to the test if they had made the correct decisions when the fuel leak was first noticed.

Not sure how "supurb aircraft" enters into this argument. Other than the fuel leak (caused by faulty maintenance just before takeoff), it did what it was designed to do, no more, no less.

Answer 5

The fact that an aircraft has a glide ratio is just a matter of physics and changes with the aircraft, load, and conditions. I agree with all of these, the pilot was at fault for putting himself in the situation. He was lucky that he put it on the ground safely, but did a good job doing so.

Answer 6

Well, this incident is actually the pilot's fault first for not noticing the fuel leak that caused the engine failure in the first place until they were in the middle of the Atlantic.

Then the pilot made up for it with superior pilot skills that took over to glide it to the Azores.

This incident also caused the revocation of ATA's ETOPS certificate.

Answer 7

Suberb aircraft and yes the pilot did a good job with the landing but he needs to go back and read the ops manual on proper procudres for fuel transfer.

Answer 8

A little of both the airbus is an inferior aircraft compared to the Boeing product but it still takes a good crew to bring the passengers back alive

Answer 9

Without a doubt pilot skills!!!! The A330 follows all the basic flight surface engineering already invented .

Answer 10

I would say a combination of both. A total loss of engine power is usually a catastrophic failure, and being able to land the aircraft unpowered is a testament to both the skill of the crew as well as the robust design of the aircraft.