Air Safety Week, "Report of Dual Engine Flameout On Trans-Atlantic Flight Raises Significant Safety Issues"

          It took a less than 70 hours of chafing for a hole to be breached in the fuel line, but only about 13 minutes for the computer systems to lead the pilots up the garden path of a fuel imbalance to total fuel exhaustion.
          The case involves Air Transat Flight 236, in which both engines shut down from fuel starvation on the A330 twinjet high over the Atlantic Ocean on Aug. 24, 2001, forcing the pilots to glide to a deadstick landing at Lajes in the Azores. Given its landing on Portuguese soil, the event was investigated by that country's safety board, the Gabinete de Prevencao e Investigacao de Acidentes com Aeronaves (GPIAA, or Aviation Accidents Prevention and Investigation Department). The Portuguese report, anticipated for some months, was released Oct. 18.
          Its publication raises significant questions about extended range operations (ETOPS), as well as maintenance, thresholds for alerting displays, pilot-computer interactions, training of both pilots and mechanics, and the adequacy of flight data recorders to perform their vital function when the electrical supply degrades. The period covering the initiation of events that culminate in an incident or accident is a paramount time of data collection for investigators, yet it is classically the time when the vital cockpit voice and flight data recorder (CVR/FDR) function seems most prone to failing utterly.