To: IHL
If you take it back to thr root cause, it is definitely engineering .
When you use the term “engineering” are you referring to maintainers-mechanics (engineer UK version) or are you referring to design engineers?
If you are referring to the latter then you are correct. On any major design program the product assurance organization would have created a design checklist to improve design for maintainability and reliability. A section of that checklist would deal with the design of parts so that they can be installed in only one way. In the case of the fuel and hydraulic lines they could be installed backwards. Installing them backwards decreased the clearance between the two lines allowing the hydraulic tube to abrade the fuel tube resulting in the fuel tube fracturing and the attendant massive leak.
Either there was no design checklist or engineering decided for their own reasons not to follow the checklist. Tech pubs did not pick up on the design deficiency and did not include any cautions or warnings relative to establishing the necessary clearance.
With no warning to check for clearance between the tubes the mechanics at Air Transat installed the tubes without any check on the clearance.
It should be noted that both GE and P&W suffered a similar defect resulting in minor leakage from a fuel tube. An AD was put out warning of the problem and a procedure was written to establish the clearance and the monitoring of the clearance to ensure it did not close up. This occurred long before the Air Transat glider incident but was never picked up by Rolls Royce.
According to my sources Air Transat took delivery of a new A-330 after the glider incident and when they checked the two lines they were touching each other. So much for learning from experience.
