Air Transat pilot Robert Piché during a news conference Tuesday in Mirabel, Que. Photo: Paul Chiasson/CP Interactive  • Web Sites: Air Transat  Related Stories  •  Probe seeks to discover why airliner had no fuel  •  Bush-plane experience aided pilot in Azores landing  •  The panic on Transat Flight 236

Robert Piché spoke calmly, systematically detailing the terrifying realization that the jetliner he was directing was heading out of the sky and into the dark ocean below.

The pilot of the Air Transat Airbus A330 spoke for the first time Tuesday after landing his aircraft on a tiny Azores landing strip last Friday with no fuel, no instruments and the lives of 300 people in his hands.

Mr. Piché said his training prepared him for the unthinkable — that his craft, Flight 236, was literally going to fall from the sky.

After rapidly losing fuel, Mr. Piché and first officer Dick Dejager witnessed both engines fail, one after another.

"That's when we called in the flight director and told the people in the cabin to prepare for a landing at sea, because we were at 30,000 feet at the time, the plane started losing altitude," Mr. Piché said in a press conference in Mirabel, Que.

"You must understand what kind of state we were in, at 33,000 feet over the Atlantic, during the night, no engines, it's not a situation that pilots like to dream about."

The impact of its forced landing on Terceira, about 1,500 kilometres off the coast of Portugal, burst eight of the plane's 10 tires and damaged most of the runway.

Mr. Piché echoed Air Transat president and CEO Denis Jacob by stressing the crew followed proper safety protocol. He deflected praise that has been directed his way the past few days.

"I'm not a hero," he said. "I could have done without this."

Mr. Jacob, speaking before Mr. Piché, said that the airline was co-operating with Portuguese authorities who are investigating the incident. He put Air Transat's safety record up against any other Canadian carrier.

"By far this is the most serious incident experienced by Air Transat in its 14 years in existence," Mr. Jacob said.

Mr. Piché has been hailed as a hero for deftly landing the Airbus A330. The incident has cast the spotlight on the pilot, who honed his skills overcoming wind, fog and rain flying bush planes on the short airstrips of Quebec's rugged Anticosti Island.

The cool-headedness and iron nerves needed for those conditions probably came in handy last Friday.

Mr. Piché, a 49-year-old is a native of a small town in Quebec's Gaspé region.

Air Transat confirmed on Saturday that a fuel leak caused the emergency landing.

During the first tense, desperate moments after the engines shut down, Mr. Piché had to pinpoint the aircraft's position and altitude and compute whether he could glide it far enough to reach land.

For 18 minutes, Mr. Piché managed to glide the aircraft on a white-knuckle ride toward land and safety.

Mr. Piché's brother, Pierre, told the Globe and Mail that he was impressed but not surprised that his younger sibling brought the plane to safety. He said Robert is exceptionally focused.

"He has guts," Pierre said, recalling that his brother's love of flying prompted him to learn to fly at the age of 16.

"He has a lot of confidence in himself. He's very professional and dedicated to being a pilot — it's his vocation. It's his life."

Air Transat praised the "competence and professionalism" of Mr. Piché, who has been with the company for nearly five years, and co-pilot Mr. Dejager, 28, who has been with Air Transat for three years.

The airliner with 291 passengers and 13 crew members was flying at a cruising altitude of 39,000 feet and was about 30 minutes from the Azores when a "technical problem" caused fuel loss, according to the company. It didn't specify the problem.

Investigators were trying to determine whether human error or mechanical failure caused the fuel shortfall aboard Air Transat Flight 236, forcing an emergency "dead-stick" landing, have removed three crucial recorders from the Airbus A330.

Although the airline insists that the Lisbon-bound flight, carrying mostly Canadians of Portuguese origin, was properly fuelled before it left Toronto, investigators are checking.

They also want to determine whether the fuel leaked, perhaps unnoticed by the pilots, during the transatlantic flight or whether a sudden loss of fuel left the A330 nearly empty.

An emergency was declared at 6:13 a.m. local time Friday, according to Captain Antonio Santos, spokesman for the Portuguese Air Force. Thirty-three minutes later, the now powerless jet slammed onto the runway at a military air base in Terceira, after a harrowing 100-kilometre glide.

Flight data recorders have been shipped for examination in Montreal and France, an official with the federal Transportation Safety Board said earlier this week.

Among the possible causes of engine failure are: insufficient fuel; a faulty fuel pump; a malfunction by the system designed to dump fuel in an emergency; and a cracked fuel tank.

Federal Transport Minister David Collenette praised the pilot and his crew.

"This was a near tragedy. They were minutes away from the plane going into the ocean and so the effort to bring that plane down without engines is undoubtedly heroic."

Late Tuesday evening, Mr. Collenette announced Air Canada and Air Transat have inspected all Airbus A330 aircraft to ensure they don't have the "mechanical conditions" that may have contributed to last week's emergency landing.

"I have been assured by both Air Canada and Air Transat that they have completed inspections on their Airbus A330," Mr. Collenette said in a release.

No other Canadian-based airline uses that engine.

Air Canada flies eight Airbus A330s and Air Transat has three, the Transport Ministry said.

The ministry said in a release that so far, there have been no other reported cases of fuel line cracks similar to that of the grounded Air Transat plane on any Canadian-operated Airbus A330.

Peter Coyles, a spokesman for the ministry, told globeandmail.com that if officials in Azores find any other difficulties with the Air Transat plane, Transport Canada will conduct further inspections.

"We will take in all the information we have, as quickly as we can," Mr. Coyles said.

Meanwhile, Air Canada Tuesday also completed precautionary inspections of 16 Rolls Royce Trent 700 series engines on its eight Airbus 330s. The inspections confirmed that "the engines are in normal, safe operating condition and meet the manufacturers' most recent modification standards," a statement read.

With a report from Allison Dunfield

By Frances Fiorino/Aviation Week & Space Technology

20-Jun-2002 10:00 AM U.S. EDT

Air Transat Flight 236 investigators--who have collected all data on the A330-200's over-ocean double-engine flameout and reviewed reports from operations, cabin safety and technical groups--are set to begin drafting the final report, which is expected to be released by year-end.

A June 7 progress review indicates the team, led by the GPIAA Portuguese Accident Investigation Authority, has no current plans to add safety recommendations to the long list of actions taken after the Aug. 24, 2001, incident. The measures, detailed in the review, end with an unheralded Mar. 20 French DGAC recommendation on fuel-leak-detection procedures.

As a result of those actions, "There are no safety deficiency areas requiring immediate action," Frederico J. F. Serra, investigator-in-charge, concluded.

The GPIAA--along with representatives from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB), the U.K.'s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), France's BEA, Montreal-based Air Transat, Airbus and Rolls-Royce--has begun analyzing the group reports to determine what factors combined to cause the extraordinary event with an improbable happy ending.

According to investigators, the Air Transat Flight 236 developed a "significant" fuel leak while en route from Toronto to Lisbon. Noting a lower than expected amount of remaining fuel, the flight crew opted to divert to Lajes Airport, Terceira Island in the Azores. About 135 mi. from Lajes, the A330-200's right Rolls-Royce Trent 772-211B engine flamed out. When Flight 236 was at 34,500-ft. altitude and 70 naut. mi. from Lajes, the left engine quit (AW&ST Sept. 3, 2001, pp. 34 and 36).

Capt. Robert Pichet guided the aircraft, with 13 crewmembers and 293 passengers, to a safe landing on Lajes' 10,865-ft. Runway 33. The A330's fuel tanks--which have a maximum capacity of 36,750 U.S. gal.--were empty. Sixteen passengers and two cabin-crewmembers sustained injuries, and the aircraft's fuselage and main landing gear were damaged.

Investigators soon determined that a low-pressure fuel line on the right engine failed as a result of contact with an adjacent hydraulic line, and the engine flame-outs resulted from fuel starvation.

The June 7 investigation progress report details various safety actions that were initiated after the incident, including the Mar. 20 DGAC Recommendation Bulletin that applies to all models of A330/A340 aircraft.

The bulletin emphasizes existing published Airbus operational procedures related to fuel-leak detection. For example, it recommends that fuel checks be performed when overflying waypoints or every 30 min. during cruise. That check would include verification that the amount of fuel on board and fuel consumed is consistent with the fuel quantity at departure.

The bulletin also recommends the fuel-imbalance procedure takes into account that the triggering of the "fuel imbalance" ECAM (electronic centralized aircraft monitor screen) advisory message might be the result of a fuel leak.

Referring to the fuel-leak-abnormal procedure in the A330/A340 flight manual, the bulletin underscores the importance of keeping the fuel crossfeed valve closed to prevent a leak from affecting both sides, when a leak is either not located or is not from an engine. The bulletin also recommends adding another step to the fuel imbalance procedure: either "T TANK MODE FWD" (if the trim tank is not empty), which would initiate a manual transfer of trim tank fuel, or "CTR TK XFR MAN" (if the center tank is not empty).

When fuel is automatically transferred from the tail trim tank or center tank, it goes into the lower of the wing tanks and tends to mask a fuel imbalance. Switching the fuel transfer to manual makes the crew more aware of what the system is doing.

Previous safety actions include:

* On Aug. 24, 2001, Transport Canada initiated a Special Purpose Audit of Air Transat's maintenance and operations. The carrier conducted a review and a corrective action plan was approved, implemented and completed.

* On Aug. 29, Airbus issued an All Operators Telex (AOT) A330-73A3033 requiring a one-time visual inspection to detect any interference between fuel and hydraulic lines on A330s equipped with Rolls-Royce Trent 700-series engines.

* On Aug. 31, the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority issued AD 005-08-2001 mandating inspections of clearances between fuel and hydraulic lines recommended in Rolls-Royce's Aug. 29, 2001, Non-Modification Service Bulletin 73-D-578.

* On Sept. 7, Transport Canada issued Commercial and Business Aviation Advisory Circular 190, which recommends measures to identify fuel leaks in flight.

* On the same date, Transport Canada reinstated Air Transat's ETOPS authority for its A330s to 90 min., and on May 17, 2002, to 120 min. for all aircraft in its fleet. The carrier's A330 ETOPS authority had been suspended immediately after the incident and limited to 90 min. for other aircraft in the fleet.