Don't forget Capt. Piche and Crew:
"On
August 24, 2001, Capt. Robert Piche (a pilot for the Canadian
charter airline Air Transat) did something that I would have (until now) flatly told you was impossible had it been proposed.
Air Transat Flight 236, an
Airbus A330 twin-engined aircraft with 304 aboard, was in transit from
Toronto to
Lisbon on August 21st. The A330's
ETOPS rating is 120 minutes. Over the
Atlantic, the crew received a warning that the right engine had developed a fuel leak. It was shut down. At this point, the aircraft is theoretically able to fly on the remaining engine for the duration of its ETOPS (120 minutes); accordingly, the aircrew declared that they were
diverting to
Lajes airfield in the
Azores islands, approximately 150
nm away.
There were further problems, however. The fuel leak was caused by a pipe breaking inside one of the
Rolls-Royce Trent 700 series engines. This leak, which was caused by a low-pressure fuel line coming into contact with one of the hydraulic lines, ended up draining the entire fuel system, perhaps due to an improperly-acting
weight and balance controller or valve. In any case, thirteen minutes after the right engine was shut down, the
left engine experienced
flame out from fuel starvation.
At the time this happened, the airplane was 85 nm north of its destination (and the nearest airfield), flying at 34,500 feet. When the second engine failed, generated electrical power was lost;
hydraulics apparently continued to function, driven by the 'windmilling' fans of the left engine and their associated generator.
Capt. Piche and crew managed to
fly the unpowered jetliner for 85 (some sources say 100+) nautical miles, and landed it at
Lajes airfield on
Terceira island. The landing blew eight of the ten tires on the airplane; however, it remained otherwise intact, and
evacuation was complete within 90 seconds. Less than a dozen people were injured, all minor; most of those occurred during the evacuation."
