A Plane Ran Out of Fuel over the Atlantic. The Pilots Saved 306 Lives

A Plane Ran Out of Fuel over the Atlantic. The Pilots Saved 306 Lives(popularmechanics.com)

6 points by ilamont 2 hours ago | 6 comments

HawtAds 1 hour ago |

Not the first time this sort of thing happened in Canada, fuel starvation is surprisingly common in aviation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

budman1 1 hour ago |

This is why you don't have FSD for airplanes. (of course, an argument could have been made that FSD would have handled the leak a little better)

HawtAds 1 hour ago | |

I would say modern autoland (both GPS based and ILS types) systems are a little better when it comes to handling emergency issues like maximizing range and endurance but the problem with autoland is that they require a lot of things to work perfectly and will refuse to take any risk (autoland systems are not probabilistic like Tesla FSDs, they are mostly automatic traditional control systems). So if the plane will miss the threshold by a few feet the autoland won't even attempt it.

budman1 1 hour ago | | |

The 'never happen' events need a human. Like "birds. both engines. looks like we are setting it down on the Hudson".

mock-possum 1 hour ago |

yowza-

> without impugning the remarkable piloting feat Piché performed by landing the plane without fuel, the Portuguese Aviation Accidents Prevention and Investigation Department’s report ultimately found that had Captain Piché and his crew identified the leak sooner, and followed the appropriate procedure instead of performing a fuel transfer from memory, they would have been able to conserve enough fuel for a normal landing at Lajes.

Two overlapping errors then - the mechanics installing the wrong part, and the crew failing to properly follow procedure - and the pilots still managed to land everybody safely. Pretty wild.

kotaKat 2 hours ago |

... I wonder if this was inspiration for Flight Simulator X's mission, Limited Options. [1] That one was flown on a 737-800, but...

"When the plane suffers a fuel leak causing the engines to fail at 35,000 feet, you must decide whether to glide to Malé or Hanimadhoo Island to save 150 passengers from drowning in the Indian Ocean."

Definitely a challenging flight under the simulator, total balls of steel to the pilots to pull it off for real.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neAVfys9jfo