Peril in the Skies

The blogosphere has been buzzing about a recent incident involving an Airbus A310 Air Transat. It seems that shortly after takeoff from Cuba on a flight to Quebec, the rudder broke off. For those of you not familiar with plane components, that’s the part of the tail that sticks up in the air. The pilot managed to stabilize the plane after dropping a ways from 35,000 feet. He radioed to Ft. Lauderdale to make a landing, but did not declare an emergency landing. Since it was not an emergency, Ft. Lauderdale told the pilot they could not allow him clearance because they did not have any customs agents there and suggested Miami. Had the pilot declared emergency, he would have been given clearance and landed. Instead, the pilot turned around and managed to fly back into Cuba.

The blogosphere is spinning this more against Airbus, especially since this almost exact thing happened in November 2001 to an American Airlines plane taking off in New York that then crashed into Queens. But something that’s not pinging on anyone’s radar yet is an incident that happened a few months ago.

Several months ago, an Air Transat plane took off from Miami in route to either Spain or France, I’m not sure. Because of air traffic, the plane was rerouted 50 miles south. Shortly after take off, one of the engines developed a leak in the fuel line. The crew, noting that the engine was choking and bleeding fuel, first tried to pump more gas into the thing. When that didn’t work, they cut the engine. However, because of their efforts to keep the first engine going, they no longer had enough fuel to make it to their final destination. The pilot then made the decision not to turn around but to keep going across the Atlantic. If the plane returned to Miami, the airline would be liable to the passengers and it might bring that down on the pilot and fire him. So he decided to risk everyone’s lives instead. As predicted, the plane ran out of gas. But, because of the plane had been forced to go 50 miles further south than their intended flight plan, they ran out of gas right around the Canary Islands. The pilot was able to glide the plane in to the runway without any injuries to anyone on board.

A heroic tale, but it shows some poor decision making by the Transat crew, just as in this recent incident. So while investigation of the Airbus A310 model is certainly warranted, Air Transat should also be examined as a potentially dangerous flier.