The Atlantic Glider revisited
 

The authorized biography of Capt Robert Piche, who glided his Air Transat A330 to a landing in the Azores after running out of fuel last year, has just been published in French by a Quebec journalist. The book, by Pierre Cayoutte, is entitled "Robert Piche aux commandes du destin (Robert Piche at the controls of destiny). Apparently, Capt Piche has had great difficulty coming to terms with the accolades and hero worship showered on him since the incident. His latest award was a "Medal of Honour", conferred on him on 5 Nov by the Quebec provincial legislature. Capt Piche went on sick leave from Air Transat in March and underwent a seven-week treatment of therapy to help him deal with the intense emotions he experienced over the Atlantic that fateful night. According to Mr Cayoutte, Piche is a gut-level survivor, who sharpened his instincts during the time he spent in a tough Georgia (USA) jail on a drug-running charge in the early 1980's. It was this experience that helped him to save his, his crew's and his passengers' lives.
Portuguese-led authorities are currently completing the final report on the incident.
Rockhound

Piche's biographer's name should read Cayouette - apologies.
Rockhound

Interesting. I've always missed a more complete follow up of the crew's whereabouts after major incidents in most safety publications.

Where are this capt and the rest of his crew nowadays?

Pull off a save like that and you deserve to retire on full pay.

major restyling of pilot training
 

Already picked up rumours about respectable flying schools inroducing classes about drugrunning. This is expected to have several benefits: not only does the drugsrunning dramatically lower training costs, also does a possible subsequent jailterm enhance airmanship.
Other benefits include nitestops at some very nice caribbean destinations and it provides an immediate alternative should one drop out of flightschool.
:cool:

Hero to Zero??
 

Certainly, a fantastic bit of flying. Let's wait for the final report to find out what did happen to all that fuel, and why Land Recovery wasn't selected IAW procedures, causing all that nasty gear damage! What should have been a fairly routine precautionary shutdown/diversion followed by a short delay for maintenance to change a leaky fuel pipe turned into a major incident and subsequent recovery procedure!

TE RANGI,
I thought by now someone in the know would have told us what the present status of Capt Piche and his crew was but no. I was paraphrasing a story in the Canadian Globe and Mail newspaper, which made no mention of Piche's current status but, in the absence of anything to the contrary, I assume they continue as employees of Air Transat. But...is Piche back on the line? That's a good question.

Jetboy,
"Why wasn't Land Recovery selected IAW procedures?" Huh?? I thought Capt Piche "selected Land Recovery" rather well.
:confused:
Rockhound

He is reported to be back on duty.

"A superior pilot is one who uses his superior judgement in order to avoide using his superior skill!"

I also await with great interest the conclusion of the accident investigation, having seen the transcript of the events. Very happy end to the flight and land recovery switch or not, nice landing, they all walked away in one piece!

How can a single point fuel leak result in venting all the fuel from the aircraft? Something is very very wrong here. Either the Airbus' design is unsafe, there were multiple system failures, or our drug-running friend, Capt Piche turned a serious emergency into an almost catastrophic one.

What on earth is 'mechanical error'? Eh??

Word was that one engine was leaking, fuel imbalance was indicated and that, allegedly, they did not check for a leak before opening cross-feed. Remember the "allegedly".

Kinsman. Where's this "transcript of events" to be had, please?

There was no CVR, apparently, because it cut out with the main power and it isn't powered by the RAT.

Other question. Why the tyre-bursts? High VS or what?

Frangible

The transcript of events was used in a power point presentation for a tech' refresher course. I have a copy but cannot confirm it's source and would be loath to publish it here before the accident report is out. I can say the cross feed appears to have been opened very early in the chain of events! This certainly did not help matters.

The tyre burst's appear to be the result of heavy braking after a deep fast landing. Not surprising under the circumstances, as I said before they all walked away from it! Some interesting lessons to be learnt from this one I think.

The report should be interesting reading and make ALPA and a few others eat crow. Can you envision the lawyers lining up at the Airtransat cash window?

To say the least. Open the crossfeed so you can pump ALL the fuel overboard and turn a serious emergency into an almost fatal one. Basic airmanship.

Roadtrip

As the official report is not out and clearly the transcript I have seen does not seem to be on general release, I am not willing in the interests of the crew to state my points more strongly, as other information may come to light. But I am sure we can all read between the lines! But thanks for the pointing out the consequences of opening the cross feed we never thought of that !!!!!!!!

But let us not convict the crew until all the facts are in, and even if they did compound the problem we should all be more interested in why and learning from the incident than hanging the guy's. It may save one of us from making the same mistake.

Well said, Kinsman. We should focus on understanding the factors that led this crew to deal with this situation in the first place.

I'm much more interested to hear how a maintenance organisation can be allowed to slip to such a low standard, that an L1011 part was placed onto an A330 engine. :confused:

I know that the vast majority of engineers out there are decent, hard working individuals with very high standards. I just wish we could completely rid the industry of people who are more concerned with getting the aircraft out on time, than with getting it done safely and correctly the first time. I only wish the manager who ordered the installation of that part would have been riding in the back of the A330 that night. That would have given him a new perspective to be sure!

What I have a problem with Kinsman, is organizations like ALPA, the news media, and other pilots raising these guys to hero status before the facts are out . . . . . and the circumstances and facts so far indicate the possibility extremely serious and basic human failures. Everybody should have kept their public mouth SHUT so they wouldn't accidently put their foot there. Certainly the primary objective is education for the rest of the pilot community, but that doesn't relieve anybody of the responsibility of command. To do so cheapens the profession . . . . just like the PIC's federal conviction drug trafficing.

Roadtrip

I was indicating much the same but perhaps I was more subtle! The elevation to hero status has been premature.

I still hope this will not turn into a witch hunt, the guy at the pointy end may carry the ultimate responsibility but this entire incident has raised a lot of questions. Apportioning blame in my experience gets in the way of finding the real cause. Guess thats why AAIB never apportion blame but report the facts.

How did the L1011 bit get on an A330?

The bit from the L1011 that got on the 330, was a fuel pump. both aircrafts use RB211 engines. the new engine they put on the 330 is shared by two other owners.

The mechanics could not use the pump form the sent out engine because it was already shipped and the spare engine did not have a pump, so they fitted a pump from a L1011 and fabricated:confused: a piece of piping to fit in the connections on the 330; but ended up to close to somehing else and vibrations pierced the tubing some thirty od flight hours later, resulting in the now famous Atlantic Glider: :eek:

when i saw this post i initially thought it was about the waco glider that was towed across the atlantic by a dc3 during the war. but on the subject of canadian airliner gliders what happened to the crew of the gimli glider, and did they get any gongs? on a final note, the incident got very little coverage in the press in britain i dont think it even made the tv.