Air Transat Flight 236, an Airbus A330-243 flying Toronto to Lisbon on 24 August 2001, ran out of fuel over the Atlantic after an undetected leak on the right engine. The 306 people aboard — 293 passengers and 13 crew — spent about 19 minutes with no engine power at all, gliding roughly 120 km to an emergency landing at Lajes in the Azores. Nobody died.
Investigators later concluded the crew’s handling of the crossfeed valve made the fuel loss worse, not better — a finding that sits alongside, not against, the praise the pilots received for the landing itself.
There’s a particular quality of silence on a flight deck when both engines stop. On 24 August 2001, Captain Robert Piché and First Officer Dirk DeJager got to hear it somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic, with 306 people seated behind them.
The aircraft was an Airbus A330-243 operating Air Transat Flight 236. It had left Toronto with full tanks. Somewhere over the ocean, a line feeding the right engine had begun leaking, and nobody on the flight deck recognized it — not because the crew was inattentive, but because the symptom that appeared first looked like something else entirely.
What followed is one of the few verified cases of a widebody commercial airliner gliding with no engine power at all. The distance and duration are on the record. So is the maintenance defect that started it, and the procedural decision that made it worse.
That second part tends to get buried under the story of the landing. Ask anyone who follows aviation and they’ll tell you about the glide.
Fewer will mention what the investigation said about the checklist the crew never ran.
How the fuel disappeared
The leak didn’t announce itself. What the crew saw first was a fuel imbalance — one side reading lighter than the other — and an imbalance on an A330 has a routine, unalarming fix. Open the crossfeed, let the tanks equalize, move on.
That’s what they did, at 05:36 UTC. The valve stayed open until 06:26.
Nobody ran the FUEL LEAK checklist. Fuel loss was first recognized at 05:53, and by then the crossfeed had been open for a while — the crew was reading the problem as something to correct, not something to isolate. The Portuguese investigation’s conclusion, as the FAA reproduces it, is blunt about the cost:
“had the Air Transat crew taken the actions required by the FUEL LEAK checklist when the fuel loss was first recognized at 05:53, the aircraft would not have run out of fuel before reaching Lajes.”
That finding comes from the Portuguese Aviation Accidents Prevention and Investigation Department’s 2004 final report. It isn’t a statement from Airbus, and it isn’t a statement from either pilot.
One thing the record doesn’t supply: a citable nationality breakdown of the people on board. The manifest confirms the total headcount and nothing beyond it, so passenger-nationality figures that circulate elsewhere shouldn’t be treated as established.
The glide to Lajes
The right engine quit first, at 06:13 UTC, with the aircraft at about 39,000 feet. Thirteen minutes later the left engine went too, by which point the A330 had drifted down to roughly FL345.
At that moment Piché had wings, altitude, and a runway within gliding distance. He covered roughly 65 nautical miles in about 19 minutes of unpowered flight — no thrust, no second attempt available — and put the aircraft down at Lajes, in the Azores. No one died.
The injuries happened during the evacuation, not the landing.
| Event | Date | Aircraft type | Occupants | Cause of fuel or engine loss | Altitude at flameout | Glide distance | Glide duration | Outcome and fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Air Transat Flight 236 | 24 August 2001 | Airbus A330-243 | 306 | Fuel exhaustion after an undetected right-engine fuel leak; crossfeed use worsened the loss | About 39,000 feet at the first engine flameout; about FL345 at the second | About 65 nautical miles (120 km) | About 19 minutes | Emergency landing at Lajes; no fatalities; injuries occurred during evacuation |
| Air Canada Flight 143, Gimli Glider | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Fuel exhaustion | Unverified | Unverified | Unverified | Successful landing at Gimli; fatalities unverified in the available material |
| British Airways Flight 9 | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Unverified in the available primary-source material | All four engines temporarily lost thrust after volcanic-ash ingestion | About 37,000 feet | About 91 nautical miles (169 km) planned or calculated glide distance; direct event measurement unverified | About 23 minutes planned or calculated glide time; direct event measurement unverified | Engines restarted and aircraft landed; fatalities unverified in the available material |
| TACA Flight 110 | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Dual engine flameout after hail and heavy rain ingestion | Unverified | Unverified | Unverified | Successful landing on a levee; fatalities unverified in the available material |
| Qantas VH-VZT fuel-imbalance incident | 25 October 2021 | Unverified in the available primary-source material | Passenger flight; exact occupant count unverified in the available material | No actual fuel leak; an open crossfeed created an apparent imbalance and led to an engine shutdown | Not applicable: no total engine-out glide occurred | Not applicable | Not applicable | Diverted and landed with fuel remaining; no fatalities reported in the cited investigation |
| Source: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) | ||||||||
Only one row in that table carries a complete, directly measured set of glide figures. The rest are there because comparison is the honest way to show how little comparable data actually exists.
Superdeals cover departures from North America, Europe and Australia.
Flight deals most people never see
Air Traveler Club monitors thousands of routes for pricing anomalies that traditional search engines miss. With ATC Superdeals members save up to 80% on each flight vs. regular fares.
Too good to be true? Check it out yourself. It's free.
Delivered weekly. Unsubscribe anytime.
The same valve, twenty years later
Twenty years after the Azores, on 25 October 2021, a Qantas Boeing 737 developed a fuel imbalance of its own. Same symptom, entirely different cause — and that difference is the useful part.
According to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, there was no leak at all. An open crossfeed created the appearance of an imbalance, the crew responded to what the gauges showed, and the sequence ended with an engine shutdown. The aircraft diverted and landed with about 5,357 kg of fuel still aboard.
No glide, no flameout, no emergency. But it confirms the trap: a crossfeed left open can make a healthy fuel system look like a sick one, which is precisely the kind of ambiguity that complicated Flight 236.
What the crossfeed valve actually does
On the A330, the crossfeed is a single valve linking the left and right fuel systems. In normal operation it does two useful jobs — it corrects an imbalance by shifting fuel from the heavy side toward the light one, and it keeps fuel reachable if a tank or engine starts misbehaving.
Both jobs assume the plumbing is intact. On Flight 236 it wasn’t.
The right engine’s supply line was already compromised, so opening the crossfeed routed left-tank fuel toward the damaged side rather than holding it in reserve. The loss accelerated instead of easing.
That’s why the regulatory fix that followed reads almost like the opposite of the instinct.
Isolate the tanks. Stop the transfer. Find the leak. Then land at the nearest suitable airport.
What this means for you
The lasting value of Flight 236 isn’t the glide. It’s what regulators wrote afterward.
In February 2006, the FAA issued Airworthiness Directive 2006-02-01, effective 3 February 2006, requiring revised fuel-leak procedures for the A330 and A340: isolate the tanks, halt fuel transfer, track down the leak, and land as soon as practicable. The Portuguese investigation’s own recommendations ran wider — pilot training, flight manuals, A330 leak-detection systems, checklists, and how major components get replaced.
One claim worth correcting. Nothing in the material reviewed here ties a change to ETOPS diversion-minimum rules specifically to Flight 236, despite the frequency with which that connection gets asserted.
As for the crew: the Air Line Pilots Association gave its Superior Airmanship Award to both Piché and DeJager in August 2002. The praise and the checklist findings occupy the same record, and neither cancels the other.
Reporting by
Key terms
- Crossfeed valve
- The crossfeed valve is a single valve on the Airbus A330 that links the aircraft’s left and right fuel systems. In normal operation it corrects a fuel imbalance by moving fuel from the heavier side to the lighter one, and it keeps fuel reachable if a tank or engine develops a problem. Its design assumes the fuel lines are intact, so leaving it open during an undetected leak can turn a routine imbalance into a fuel emergency.
- ETOPS
- ETOPS is the set of rules governing how far a twin-engine airliner may fly from a suitable diversion airport. It applies to long overwater routes, where a twinjet must stay within a set flying time of an alternate airfield in case one engine fails. For a twinjet crossing the Atlantic, those limits shape which routes are legal — the operational backdrop to Flight 236’s diversion to Lajes.
- Airworthiness Directive
- An Airworthiness Directive is a legally binding order from a civil aviation authority requiring operators to correct an unsafe condition on a specific aircraft type. Once issued, it compels airlines to carry out the specified inspections, modifications, or procedure changes within a set timeframe. The directive that followed Flight 236 turned the investigation’s findings into a mandatory fix for the A330 and A340.
- Fuel leak checklist
- The fuel leak checklist is a written procedure that flight crews run when they suspect fuel is escaping from the aircraft’s fuel system. It directs the crew to isolate the affected tanks and stop fuel transfers so the leak can be located before the flight continues. Its purpose is to stop a suspected leak from draining the tanks, so the timing of when a crew runs it can decide whether a flight reaches its destination.
Questions? Answers.
How many people were on board Air Transat Flight 236?
Flight 236 carried 293 passengers and 13 crew members, a total of 306 occupants. That headcount is confirmed by the manifest; no citable nationality breakdown of those on board was established in the available material.
How far and for how long did Air Transat Flight 236 glide with no engine power?
After both engines flamed out, the A330 glided about 65 nautical miles, or 120 km, and stayed airborne without thrust for roughly 19 minutes before landing at Lajes in the Azores.
What role did the crossfeed play in the fuel loss on Air Transat Flight 236?
The crossfeed valve opened at 05:36 UTC and stayed open until the left engine flamed out at 06:26 — after the right engine had already quit at 06:13. Because the right engine’s fuel line was leaking, the open valve let left-tank fuel feed the damaged side, accelerating the loss rather than containing it.
What regulatory changes followed Air Transat Flight 236?
FAA Airworthiness Directive 2006-02-01, effective 3 February 2006, mandated new fuel-leak procedures for the A330 and A340: isolate the tanks, stop fuel transfer, locate the leak, and land promptly. The available material does not establish that Flight 236 caused a specific change to ETOPS diversion-minimum rules.
Were the pilots of Air Transat Flight 236 recognized after the incident?
Yes. The Air Line Pilots Association presented its Superior Airmanship Award in August 2002 to both Captain Robert Piché and First Officer Dirk DeJager.
Did the Qantas VH-VZT incident involve a fuel leak or an engine-out glide?
Neither. The 25 October 2021 incident involved no actual fuel leak and no total engine-out glide — an open crossfeed produced an apparent imbalance that led to an engine shutdown. The aircraft diverted and landed with about 5,357 kg of fuel remaining.
