Investigators Redirect Focus On Air Transat Emergency Landing In Azores. .
Well, maybe the cockpit crew wasn't out to lunch after all. It could have been a software glitch that made things more than confusing for the crew of Air Transat's Flight 236 and ultimately led to an emergency dead-stick landing in the Azores last August, after the jet ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean. According to a report in the Canadian Press, Portuguese investigators are now focusing on aircraft system software that provides information to the cockpit crew. Investigators suspect the software mistakenly identified a fuel leak as a fuel imbalance, prompting the crew to respond erroneously to the situation. The Air Transat flight with 291 pax and 13 crewmembers aboard landed safely August 24 at a military air base in the isolated islands of the Azores. "What we're discussing very carefully is whether the information provided by the computer to the crew is the best information to deal with the problem, and we have some serious doubts with that," Frederico Serra said in an interview from Lisbon, Portugal. "There is something wrong with this system. There is something that was not given to crew on time." After the incident, Transport Canada ordered all Air Transat pilots to take "remedial" fuel-management training that would stress the need to divert to the nearest possible airport at the first signs of engine-related emergency. Now it seems the mistake was not in the crew response, but in the bad information the software gave them.
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