If it was bad enough to delay the flt it was bad enough to wait for maintenance. Doing a start with a leaky engine with pax loaded , a puddle under said engine and I guess nobody outside on the headset to monitor for fire or to use an extinguisher if req'd was just a tad risky.
The one thing the old "wise" pilot did get right was many engine fuel leaks do heal up when seals are moved / pressurised etc. The rest was unacceptable risk imho.
Engine leaks/weeps, seeps are tolerated to given amounts by the AMM but should be assessed first.

:eek: Wise...? :hmm: let's say a brave... to be polite :=Pax... :D

I remember an MD-11 that drove us nuts, we were loosing/consuming fuel and could not figure it out. Climbing out at about 10k feet in this freighter someone went back during a ferry flight to have a smoke and noticed fuel streaming out of an overwing panel.

Just as soon as quantity dropped below the panel as far as required it would stop leaking and dry up well before landing.

Meikleour,

You write, "The biggest mystery to me remains as to why the crew thought that opening the crossfeed was of any use to them. In fact if they had done NO checklists at all, the outcome would have been much more benign."

My understanding of the report is that the crew originally believed that they had a fuel imbalance and by memory tried to balance fuel. This of course involved opening the crossfeed.

Some time later they determined that they had a fuel leak, not a fuel imbalance. Unfortunately they never went back and closed the crossfeed, thereby creating a situation that allowed all of the fuel to be pumped overboard. Other issues that arose concerned the location of the leak and the need to shutdown an engine (which did not happen).

Leaving the crossfeed closed or shutting down the leaking engine would have stopped the leak and made the landing a powered one.

The report is a good read and there is lots to learn for all of us.

best regards,

Bruce Waddington

Hi Bruce

What does the report have to say about the crew`s conclusion that they had a fuel imbalance scenario without having done a FU + FOB comparison?

By the way I am quite surprised to see how different your operator`s QRH was from mine as listed. I thought that Airbus issued checklists to operators for them to reformat to their own requirements? I was with a launch customer for the A330 for 10 + years on type and saw many changes introduced by AI, but I have always thought that that checklist was `not for the faint hearted`!!

M,

Try this link. It is not the full report but will give you the flavour of the issues. One of the key points is that the crew did not refer to the Fuel Imbalance Checklist and therefore did not note the caution at the beginning of the checklist:

FUEL IMBALANCE

"FOB........................................................ ...........CHECK

A fuel imbalance may indicate a fuel leak.

Do not apply this procedure, if a fuel leak is suspected. Refer to FUEL LEAK procedure"

ASN Aircraft accident Airbus A330-243 C-GITS Terceira-Lajes AFB, Azores (LFB)

best regards,

Bruce Waddington

Bruce,

Thanks for the link. I followed the additional link to the Portugese Report and re-read it. Had read it many years before! It makes pretty damning reading! Page 58 of 103 confirms what I have been saying about the fuel leak checklist being a bit `punchy` - in fact the Air Transat captain himself admitted that he had not wanted to descend to the gravity ceiling.

I am still a bit puzzled as to why your posted checklist should have been so different from mine(Asian carrier) which was identical to the one provided to Air Transat as listed in the report. Did AC modify their Airbus checklists?

M,

I don't know the answer to your question. Another possibility is that the checklist I posted was a revision after the Air Transat incident.

best regards,

Bruce Waddington