Crisis Over The Atlantic | Air France Flight 66

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This is the story of air france flight 66. It was a saturday the 30th of september 2017 and an air france A380 was flying from Charles De Gaulle international to los angeles international airport. The plane had 24 crew members on board and 497 passengers. The plane took off at 9:50 am and it climbed to 33,000 feet. Since this was quite a long flight the plane had two first officer on board, the second first officer decided to take the first shift. As the plane made its way across the atlantic the plane climbed and descended a bit by 11:14 am the plane was at 37,000 feet. With the plane about 100 Nm from the coast of greenland the pilots got in touch with gander oceanic over the CPDLC or the Controller-Pilot Data Link Communication which is a written form of communication between the pilot and the controller, its mostly used for clearances and things like that. The controller allowed them to climb to 38000 feet and they were asked to report when they were at 38000 feet. As the plane climbed to its new cruising altitude the outer casing of the number 4 engine of flight 66 was destroyed. The air inlet of the engine was ripped away and it fell to the ground. The plane's number 4 engine was out of operation, the wing of the plane was hit by small pieces of debris.

On the flight deck they knew something was wrong, the plane turned three degrees to the right in three seconds and the entire airframe started vibrating. The crew had seen similar circumstances in their simulator training and they assumed that an engine was surging. An Eng 4 stall message came up on the ecam display, Ecam actions said the captain. He disconnected the autopilot and took over control of the plane and he pulled back power on engine number 4. The engine shut itself down and the first officer pushed the engine 4 fire push button.
So far the crew had not seen what had happened to engine number 4. A member of the cabin crew entered the cockpit with a picture of engine number 4 taken by a passenger. First officer one went to the upper decks to see the damage for himself. He saw that the leading edge slats were damaged and that the flaps were vibrating a bit.

The captain fell back on his training in this situation air france pilots are trained to deal with issues using the FOR DEC method. Facts, Options, Risks & benefits, Decide, Execution, Check.
He saw that the planes speed had fallen from 277 knots to 258 knots. He knew that they couldnt stay at 37000 feet for much longer, the captain decided to bring the plane down to a more reasonable altitude step by step. They got down to 36000 feet then to 35000 feet and so on till they got the plane down to 27000 feet.

ATC noticed that the plane was below its assigned altitude and so a message came in saying ““ATC NOW SHOWS YOU FL330. IS THERE A PROBLEM?. Air france flight 66 declared a mayday, they were too far out for voice transmissions and so their mayday had to be relayed by another plane. At this point the crew needed an airport to land their plane at and they had two options, goose bay airport in canada and Kangerlussuaq in greenland, they studied the approaches and the environment of the two airports and decided that goosebay was the better option even though it was further away.

Flight 66 was cleared onto runway 26. As the plane was at 1000 feet the captain disengaged the autopilot and then hand flew the airplane in. The plane landed at 3:42 pm. They rolled down

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