No Engines, No Problem | Flying On Empty | Air Transat Flight 236

Air Transat Picture: Konstantin von Wedelstaedt
This is the story of Air transat flight 236, On the 24th of august of 2001 an air transat A330 was on its way from toronto pearson international airport to lisbon in portugal. The plane had 293 passengers onboard and 13 crew members on board. The captain was the one at the controls. The plane departed Toronto at 12:52 am UTC with almost 47 tons 94,000 pounds of fuel, which was more than enough for the trip. It was just another regular flight, and at the start that's all it was. As the plane crossed 20 degrees west something came up. At 5:03 am they started seeing unusual oil indications on the right engine, that is engine number 2. The anomaly was reported to the people on the ground at mirabel canada. At 5:33 am the crew got an advisory warning on the right engine. While troubleshooting this error they pulled up the fuel page and they realized that they had a fuel imbalance. They had a fuel imbalance between the left and the right inner wing tanks. To correct this imbalance they started feeding the right engine from the left hand tanks.

At 5:45 am UTC their fuel level got so low that they couldn't make it to Lisbon anymore. They now had to divert, it was their only option they were now aiming to land at Lajes airport. At this point they had 7 tons 15,000 pounds of fuel left. This was perplexing and so the pilots asked the crew members to look out of the windows to see if they could see a stream of fuel from the wing. But in the darkness they couldnt see anything.
At 5:54 am the crew, now faced with a situation in which fuel was disappearing right in front of their eyes, decided to feed both engines from the right fuel tank.
Faced with fuel values that made no sense they contacted the maintenance crew on the ground, they had 4.7 tons of fuel right now 12 tons below the planned value. They suspected a fuel leak in the right inner tanks.The situation was bad as they talked to maintenance techs on the ground the fuel quantities in the left tank had gone down by 1 tonne and 3.2 tons in the right tank.

The maintenance technicians suggested that there might be a leak in the left hand engine and the captain momentarily opted to feed the engines from the left tanks. They now had 1.1 tons of fuel left.

At 6:13 am UTC the worst case scenario started to unfurl, at 39000 feet the right engine failed and with 150 miles to go to get to lajes they were really in a tough spot. They could no longer maintain 39000 feet with one engine, and after letting Santa Maria control know they started a descent. 6:15 am, the pilots reported that they now had 600 kilos of fuel onboard. At 6:23 am it was obvious that things would get worse before they got better and so the first officer declared a mayday call. 3 minutes later the left engine flamed out. They were at 34,500 feet and they had 65 miles to lajes. They prepped the plane to glide as best as they could and they headed for lajes as a glider.
6:31 am the were about 8 Nm from runway 33 and at 13,000 feet. They were too high, the captain let approach know that he was going to conduct a left 360 degree turn to lose altitude. The turn was conducted with the landing gear and the slats out. They did an orbit but they were still a bit too high.

As they were on final approach the captain flew S turns to lose some of that extra altitude.

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