The Impact of AirTransat's Incident

	GRAPPLING WITH THE unpowered plane for a harrowing 18 minutes as passengers donned life vests and braced themselves to ditch in the ocean, Capt. Piche nailed his one shot at a landing, bringing the stricken Airbus widebody down on an airstrip in the Azores Islands. All 304 people onboard escaped.        Yet for all the pilot’s skill and quick wits, the outcome might have been quite different in another part of the world. A plane with a similar fuel leak cruising stretches of the Pacific with nary a ribbon of landing strip for 1,500 miles, or following one of the new polar routes hugging the Arctic Circle, would probably meet a tragic end.
	Business passengers are eager for the convenience of ultralong, nonstop flights, some lasting nearly 16 hours, such as from New York to Hong Kong. Consequently, the number of such flights has soared in the past year.        But many of these long routes pass close to the Arctic Circle, while others traverse some of the world’s most desolate regions, prompting growing concerns about whether aircraft are properly equipped to spend almost a day airborne. Doubts are also rising about whether tiny, far-flung and often poorly funded airfields are ready to handle a stricken jumbo jet crammed with passengers.        “The trend toward ultralong flights is raising difficult and entirely new issues” that are straining the industry’s safety net, says Ted Murphy, an Aer Lingus captain who is president of the largest international federation of pilot unions. “In a real emergency, you put down anywhere you can” says Frank Taylor, director of the Aviation Safety Center at Britain’s Cranfield University. “But that may just delay the inevitable, if everyone freezes or can’t get to a hospital.”
	Engine reliability has improved significantly since the mid-1990s, with in-flight shutdowns occurring much less frequently and some aircraft models experiencing less than one unscheduled landing for roughly every 25,000 flights. By other measures, too, the current crop of twin-engine jetliners boasts an enviable safety record overall. Veteran pilots say they don’t recall any aircraft operated by a major carrier ditching in the Atlantic since the 1950s.        But the scare in the Azores, apparently caused by a maintenance mistake, and several other near-accidents have reopened the question of whether tougher safety rules are needed as planes stay aloft longer. The Federal Aviation Administration currently requires even specially equipped and maintained two-engine planes to stick to flight paths within 207 minutes of an airport. Planes with three or four engines can fly any routes, regardless of the distance from a landing strip. European regulators accept current U.S. rules.        But Boeing Co., the maker of the popular 777 twin-engine widebody, is now pushing for a single set of standards covering all long-haul flights regardless of the number of engines — rules that aren’t expected to rely as much on limiting the time it takes to reach the nearest airport. Airbus supports comprehensive rules for long-range operations, but raises questions Boeing has shied away from, like whether to require planes to carry winter clothes for passengers in case of a forced landing. (Airbus hasn’t taken a position on the issue.)        A fuel leak, of course, could cripple almost any plane, no matter how many engines. Thus, safety experts say authorities should set improved standards for a wide range of essential tasks such as detecting and extinguishing fires, forecasting weather and supplying backup electric power. They are also calling for possible changes in minimum reserve-fuel requirements and even new approaches to deal with the potential for jet fuel to freeze in extreme cases, if unusually cold weather conditions and unexpected winds fool pilots. Crew fatigue, air pollution inside the cabin, injuries from turbulence and possible illnesses afflicting pilots or passengers all can become more pronounced on long-haul flights.
	The prospect of tougher rules is dividing the airline industry. Carriers such as Continental Airlines Inc. and UAL Corp.’s United with fleets of newer, more advanced twin-engine jets might end up not having to do much to comply with new requirements. But Northwest Airlines and some non-U.S. carriers may need to make substantial improvements to the older three- and four-engine models they fly. So far, FAA officials are waiting for an industry consensus, but a series of near-accidents has added urgency to the deliberations.        In March, a Delta Air Lines MD-11 en route to Tokyo from Los Angeles made a landing, after detecting smoke, in Cold Bay, Alaska, a wind-swept speck on the tundra with 69 residents but a 10,000-foot runway dating to World War II. The village sent both its school buses to help shuttle more than 200 passengers to the local school and other places they could spend the night.        About four years ago, a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 heading to Los Angeles from London was forced to put down at Canada’s isolated Baffin Island when a passenger suffered a heart attack. The jumbo jet hit an obstruction while taxiing, damaged a wing and temporarily stranded some 400 passengers and crew in subfreezing conditions with limited shelter.
	That mix of minimal facilities and extreme weather gets more dangerous further afield. Across Siberia and the Aleutian Islands, some airstrips are frequently closed by storms or volcanic eruptions. Others lack dependable weather data, English-speaking controllers, automated electronic-landing systems, or wide enough runways and taxiways for big jets to maneuver. It’s far from clear what firefighting and rescue services can be expected at some of these locations. Tropical sites pose different dangers. Downpours can leave the tarmac flooded with three feet of water.        Copyright © 2001 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/622166.asp

 Portuguese and Canadian safety officials investigating why an Air Transat Airbus A330-200 had to make an unpowered landing in the Azores on 24 August will be unable to derive any information from the aircraft's flight recorders for the last 20min of the flight.
The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada confirms the flameout of both of the A330's engines stopped the supply of electrical power to its alternating current (AC) power buses. As in many other commercial aircraft types, the AC buses in the A330-200 provide the electricity supply to power both the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR).
The A330's AC power buses are supplied with electrical current by the generators attached to each engine and by the aircraft's auxiliary power unit (APU). In the Air Transat incident, however, the engines flamed out because of fuel starvation following a serious fuel leak and the draining of all fuel also meant the pilots of the aircraft were unable to use the APU to provide electrical power.
The initial findings of the investigation, led by the Portuguese civil aviation agency INAC, show the A330's right engine - the engine in whose fuel supply the leak occurred - flamed out at 06:13 GMT on 24 August, but that the left engine of the aircraft remained lit for another 13min, until 06:26 GMT.
At this point the A330 was still at an altitude of 34,000ft and was 85nm distant from Lajes airport on the island of Terceira, at which it landed at 06:46 GMT after gliding without engine power or main electrical power for 20 min. At 06:39 GMT, 7min before landing, the aircraft was still at an altitude of 13,000ft and was 8nm from the threshold of Lajes airport's runway 33.
Neither the DFDF nor the CVR was operational during the last 20min of the flight as a result of the loss of electrical power. This is not preventing the officials investigating the incident from using the readouts from the recorders in trying to piece together why both engines flamed out, as the data from the period before the fuel ran out is likely to be of more immediate importance in finding out what went wrong than what happened afterwards.
Nevertheless, one official says that as well as understanding the Air Transat crew's actions during the last 20min of the flight, the post-flameout data could have been of considerable use to the investigating agencies in modeling the flight characteristics and systems behavior of the A330 for future simulations of the aircraft in conditions of unpowered flight.
The TSB has been concerned about interruptions in power supply to flight data recorders of commercial aircraft ever since it began its investigation into the crash of a Swissair MD-11 off the coast of Newfoundland in September 1998.
In its first safety action arising from the Swissair Flight 111 investigation, the TSB recommended on 9 March 1999 that from 1 January 2005 every aircraft with a CVR offering a recording capacity of at least 2h should have an independent power supply to power the CVR and the cockpit area microphone for a period of 10min.
This power supply would allow the microphone and CVR to keep working whenever the normal power source to each was interrupted.
The TSB also recommended that in aircraft required to have two flight recorders, each recorder should be powered by a separate generator bus, to minimize the possibility of an interruption in the power supply from one bus affecting the recording capabilities of both the recorders.
In its Swissair 111 recommendations the TSB did not specifically address the need for the DFDR in each aircraft to be linked to an independent power supply, but the agency might review its position as a result of the findings of the Air Transat incident.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news 

Rgds.

Kieran Daly Editor Air Transport Intelligence 

Allegro is an airline based in Mexico and has a variety of routes, usually charter, between the U.S. and Mexico. Although Allegro Airlines has had no fatal events involving passengers, it has experienced one significant safety event that led to serious damage to the aircraft and some injuries to the occupants. The details of the event are provided below.

14 May 1996;Allegro Air DC9-14; near Tampico, Mexico: The airline was inbound to Cancun, Mexico on a charter flight that originated in Orlando, Florida when the aircraft ran out of fuel about 23 nautical miles (42 km) out over the Gulf of Mexico. The pilot elected to continue the approach and attempt to land at the Tampico Airport. The airplane was reported to have landed on a road near the airport. During the landing roll, the nose landing gear collapsed resulting in structural damage to the airframe. Four passengers sustained minor injuries during the emergency evacuation, while the crew of four and the remainder 36 passengers were not injured.

Source: (also check out sources used for every accident)
CNN; ICAO Adrep Summary 1/97 (#27)
CNN - Bizarre ordeal recounted in Ethiopian Airlines crash - Nov. 24, 1996
CNN - Honeymooners capture dramatic images of Ethiopian jet crash - Nov. 26, 1996
QuickTime Movie - crash filmed by tourists at CNN
QuickTime Movie (896Kb) - wreckage just offshore at CNN

Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767-260ER ET-AIZ; photo copyright Frank Schaefer - taken at London-Heathrow, March 1996

More Air Transat Revelations        Air Transat Aftermath (Fines and Restrictions)

Additional Fuel Exhaustion / Multiple Engine Failure Events: 

(A Selection from the 82 Airliner accidents [ of that Nature ] at   http://aviation-safety.net/events/ene.shtml )

a.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1996/960224-0.htm       AN-12

b.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1994/940918-0.htm       BAC-111

c.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1993/931115-1.htm       Airbus A300B2

d.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1993/930323-0.htm       Fokker Friendship F27

e.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1991/910626-0.htm        BAC-111

f.   http://aviation-safety.net/database/1990/900911-0.htm        B727 (fuel exhaustion/loss)

g.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1990/900125-0.htm        Avianca 707 (New York - failed to declare fuel emergency)

h.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1989/890903-0.htm        B737 (fuel exhaustion)

i.   http://aviation-safety.net/database/1988/881213-1.htm        B707 fuel exhaustion (Cairo)

j.  http://aviation-safety.net/database/1978/781228-1.htm         United DC-8 (fuel exhaustion while fixing gear problem -Portland OR)

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