Fly-By-Wire Flight Controls

"Eunometic" wrote in message
ups.com...


Some years ago there was an Airbus A330 FBW fly by wire widebody that
ran out of fuel crossing the atlantic. It had to make an emergency
landing at (I thnk) the Azores I think from over 100km out without
fuel.


70nm at 34,500 ft

A leaking fuel delivery pipe in the engine pylon drained the aircrafts
fuel: the pilot didn't believe his instruments and thus kept
transfering fuel from the good side to the bad side rather than
shutdown the bad engine. He thus drained both wings.

When fuel cut out (I saw a dramatisation ogf the events) the ram air
turbine deployed and the pilots, after finally acknowledging their fuel
situation went through their checklist.

Lights and pressurisation was lost with the power.

Most pointedly they lost spoilers and flaps; they really only had a few
instruments, ailerons, tail surfaces and the undercarriage. As a
result of being without flaps the landing speed was very high and
becuase there were no spoilers they couldn't loose speed or altitude
and actually had to circle and zig zag to loose both speed an altitude.
This made the one chance of making the runway even harder as there
would be no go arounds.

To cap it all of the runway in the azores ends in a 300ft shear cliff.
They stopped a few dozen meters short with blown tyres.

Airbus changed their software and though the pilot was clearly not
making the best decisions that day it was easier to given him awards.


Airbus did not change their software which had behaved correctly, they
re-issued the flight manuals emphasizing the advice that was already
present to close the cross feed valves in the case of unexpectedly high
fuel consumption on one engine.

Transport Canada fined the airline C$250,000 (about US$165,000)
for maintenance infractions relating to an improper installation of a
hydraulic pump on an engine of the incident aircraft.


Keith



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