Mostly research and a spread sheet. I reversed engineered the fuel backwards from Lisbon and Lajes back to the fuel line break point. Assuming 1 hr reserve. The hardest estimation was the time at which the break occured. I read an article on the web (I believe from aviationsafety.com) that they were losing 550 lbs/min. I was able to get reasonable agreement with that.
You can also calculate fuel from start up to near break but is more error prone since they were closer to the destination.
It's interesting how so much can be calculated using fundamental physics and aerodynamics.
Last November I met the Captain at his biography signing. I won't go into certain details here but it was a very interesting conversation about how so much of his instrumentation was lost during his night-time gliding phase over a dark ocean. I got the impression that a worldly barn door pilot with a lot of "bush" flying as compared to "urban" flying is wonderful experience in a stressful situation. We talked, amougst other things, about what technique he used to fly and estimate his glide. I was polite and did not ask him about the closure of the cross-feed fuel valve.
Previous postings of mine on other sites:
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I just read a good chunk of his biography. It didn't take much time as it is in 18 point font. He seems to have paid his dues, especially in prison with the tough guys, the gay guys, the racist guys, and some of the guards. Many of these didn't like the fact that he ended up leading kitchen duties with over 70 men under him in the kitchen. He held quite a few of the blue collar jobs before jail and just after jail. He was a bar man in Montreal in between jail and Air Transat. He had a few ****ups as a teenager while doing his pilot training in college and almost lost his student position several times. Many college flying instructors hated his guts except for 1 particular instructor. He eventally moved to top of class even after half of the 30 students failed. What got him a job on big planes was letters of reference from earlier profs and co-students.
The Air transat glider story and its pilot's biography may be on TV in the future.
Captain Piché Makes a Perfect Landing at Pixcom
MONTREAL, Dec. 2 /CNW Telbec/ - Airline captain Robert Piché is about to have his story dramatized on the small screen. Pixcom, the Montreal-based television production firm, announced today that it had signed agreements with
Piché, his biographer, Pierre Cayouette, and the publishing house "Libre Expression" to proceed with a drama production inspired by the larger-than-life story of the now-famous pilot. The French book, "ROBERT PICHE, Aux commandes du destin", is already a best-seller just two weeks after its
release.
In August 2001, Robert Piché was at the controls of Air Transat flight TS-236 when his Airbus A-330 encountered serious technical difficulties. He made a spectacular and successful emergency landing in the Azores, saving the lives
of the 304 people on board.
Following the signing, Piché said he was very moved by the remarkable interest in his story and the positive things people had to say about him. "This dramatization will allow me to share with as many people as possible
those moments that marked my life forever."
Pixcom will be counting on development and broadcasting support from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Société Radio-Canada. ... are confident that "the incredible story of Robert Piché will attract large audiences and be an important milestone for
Pixcom."
.... Pixcom ... is an integrated corporation involved in the development, production, postproduction
and distribution of hundreds of television programs every year. Pixcom exports its products around the world and also provides television engineering services to ensure the coverage of large-scale events in international
markets.
Met Robert Piché the Captain himself last November and I finally bought his autographed biography. Of course it was an awkward meeting considering all the things that have happened to him and all the attacks from the media. It was cute and funny to see all the non-aviation "little ladies" praise him for his heroics and putting him up there as if he was Jesus. I'm sure he was Jesus to most of his passengers. It seemed to me that every friend, and stranger in his life and his past lives came to see him and shake his hand.
He seemed to be distracted by a whole bunch of details behind him. But, I did get to talk to him about flying but I did not dare ask him THE question "Why wasn't the cross-feed valve not closed?" for which all my friends were asking me to ask. But he did mention to me some things that I won't discuss here. We both did laugh when I reminded him about what he wrote in his book about it being a surreal moment when pieces of the wheels continued rolling on down the runway just after the plane stopped. He told me he lost ALL navigation except for the altimeter, artificial horizon, airspeed, compass, VHF. He lost GPS, VOR, etc .... But he was easily able to see the lights of the island from over 20000 feet since the sky was clear. The airport was flashing its lights. He did not have any flaps but only had some slats. The emergency break system only had one shot.
I really got the impression that his experience of thousands of hours flying barn doors all over the world helped him keep his calm. And that a pilot who did not fly barn doors all over the world may be too squeaky clean.
There is a 1:30 minute video clip of the televised biographical interview with Air Transat's Captain Piché yesterday where he talks about his financial woes which led him to Jamaica, many women, and 500 Kg of marijuana in a twin in the states. On the complete televised interview he talks about the continuous crisis you feel months after the Transat incident. It took him the 3rd therapist to understand his continuous state of "crisis" and he's been sober for 8.5 months (congrats). I believe he's also had some extremely serious crisis with his son (and I believe it may have been death related) but I missed most of that part. He's quite open. Too bad I don't have the transcript. His biography is coming out this week. The video clip is in french.
http://emission.tva.ca/medias-31/robertpiche.ram
http://emission.tva.ca/31-emission.shtml
Air Transat's ocean-glider-pilot's great biography in print. Over Newfoundland he asked Air Traffic for a higher altitude and got it but with one condition, that he flies parallel to the same air highway but 60 miles south. If he would of stayed on the originally planed route he would of glided 15 miles short of the airport and would of had to ditch in the ocean.
I read some of Robert Piché's bio that came out this week and it's a simple read. They could of written a book just about the details of the Air Transat Flight 236 incident but they kept it short but talked quite a bit about his life. He was interviewed on TV this week and he seems to have had quite a life: drug smuggling, jail, sons death??, airline, alcohol, etc... He was born very close to where my father was born.
If there would of been a complete layer of clouds like the day before and after then he would of not seen the airport (it was before dawn); he asked the airport to flash the runway lights. I don't know what radio navigation instruments were working to help him find the runway alignment. In the book they barely cover the "early" alarms that were hinting at engine # 2 problems and the plane's prior maintenance woes.
During the debugging phase he seemed to be convinced that it was a software problem and couldn't believe that he was running out of fuel. His "stewardesses" took flashlights to try to see if an engine was leaking fuel but they saw nothing. When he landed he was still convinced that he had plenty of fuel on board but found out that he had almost nothing when they powered up his plane with an external electrical generator.
When his plane came to a screeching halt (literally) on the runway, after doing a 230 mph touchdown without flaps nor slats (normally it's less than 150), with the dead silence around him he saw part of his wheels continue rolling ahead and beyond the airplane, which game him an eerie feeling. Because he locked his wheel brakes the tires blew causing the metal rims to scrape on the runway. One of his first comments after getting out of the plane and after doing the obligatory swearing in french was that his " #$%#$ wheels were square".
Air Transat Pilot's R. Piche web page at
http://www.io-ms.com/piche/en/index.asp He's now doing conferences. Maybe he can do one on this Forum :-)
Keep the blue side up; wherever up is ?
Practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.