Air Transat Settlement

FrugalFlyerv2.0

Veteran
Oct 29, 2003
2,931
3,341
Below is the story from the Toronto Star.
The article does not mention anything about Air Transat's maintenance procedures which lead to the fuel leak. IIRC, there was a story that the Transport Canada was investigating /or fined Air Transat for 'sketchy' maintenance procedures.
The settlement works out to roughly 100X the price of the ticket (based on some of the ads I've seen for Air Transat fares to Europe and before lawyers get paid ofcourse).

________________________


Toronto Star - March 2, 2005


Airline offers $7.65M payout after fuel runs out
Plane ran out of fuel over Atlantic
175 passengers to share settlement

PHILIP MASCOLL
STAFF REPORTER

More than half the passengers on an Air Transat flight between Toronto and Portugal that glided to safety after it ran out of fuel will share $7.65 million, lawyers say.

A court is expected next month to approve the settlement announced yesterday.

It will also decide how to divide the settlement among the 175 passengers who filed a class-action suit.

Toronto lawyer Mark Mason said the proceeds to passengers and their families, legal fees and administrative costs would all be decided at a hearing scheduled for April 25.

"In terms of distribution, it is anticipated that it will at least be more than Air Transat originally offered each passenger," Mason said.

The airline had originally offered in the region of $8,800 per passenger.

Yesterday's settlement works out to more than $40,000 for each of the 175 passengers.

This settlement, negotiated jointly by Mason's firm and a Vancouver law firm, will apply to 175 of the 297 passengers on Air Transat 236 who did not take the earlier offer.

Officials at Air Transat could not be reached for comment.

A report released in October blamed Captain Robert Piche for not recognizing that the A-330 Airbus had developed a fuel leak over the Atlantic in 2001.

There were 303 people on board the aircraft which glided for 19 minutes.

The report found a string of human errors exacerbated a catastrophic fuel leak on the A-330 Airbus over the Atlantic Ocean.

The report said that if Piche and his first officer, Dirk De Jager, had followed procedures and recognized clues their fuel was spewing into the air during their aircraft's flight, they would have been able to shut down one engine and then land at the Azores' Lajez airport with fuel to spare.

Instead, after carrying out an important safety procedure "by memory" and then mistakenly sending their remaining fuel to the leak tank, the jet ran out of fuel, forcing it into a 19-minute "engines out" glide toward the island.

Most of the aircraft's tires were blown by the force of the landing, which resulted in 11 injuries, none of them serious.

"The crew did not correctly evaluate the situation before taking action," concluded the 103-page report that was written by the Portuguese Aviation Accidents Investigation Department.

"The flight crew did not recognize that a fuel leak situation existed," it added.
 
FrugalFlyerv2.0 said:
Yesterday's settlement works out to more than $40,000 for each of the 175 passengers.

$40 grand for landing safely! (OK, $40 grand in Canadian 'loonies'--what's that in real money?
:p )
Bet some of those greedy bastards are kicking themselves that they didn't actually get injured--then they'd really be rich!
 
Whats next getting civial liabilites for an engine out, or one falling off, you got to be fricking kidding me. Why didn't the folks on that Air Canada 767 sue when they ran out of fuel and had to land at an old airport that was being used as a raceway. Wait and see, US carriers will be next for some sue happy clown!
 
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread starter
  • #5
mga707 said:
$40 grand for landing safely! (OK, $40 grand in Canadian 'loonies'--what's that in real money?
:p )
Bet some of those greedy bastards are kicking themselves that they didn't actually get injured--then they'd really be rich!
[post="252601"][/post]​

About (or aboot) $32000 USD, eh!
But like I said, thats before the laywers get paid - they have to eat too.
 
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread starter
  • #6
mrfish3726 said:
Whats next getting civial liabilites for an engine out, or one falling off, you got to be fricking kidding me. Why didn't the folks on that Air Canada 767 sue when they ran out of fuel and had to land at an old airport that was being used as a raceway. Wait and see, US carriers will be next for some sue happy clown!
[post="252665"][/post]​

I'm pretty confident that had the lawsuit been in the USA, more than $40000 would be awarded. I think it is more that just an award for landing safely, there were some issues with Air Transat's maintenance procedures around the time of the accident. I'll look it up & post later.
 
  • Thread Starter
  • Thread starter
  • #7
Here's some news from the past.

_______________

News Release

No. H107/01
For release September 6, 2001
TRANSPORT MINISTER
ANNOUNCES FINES AND NEW
OPERATING RESTRICTIONS FOR AIR TRANSAT

OTTAWA - Transport Minister David Collenette today announced that, pursuant to the provisions of the Aeronautics Act, Transport Canada has fined Air Transat $250,000 stemming from maintenance infractions related to the Air Transat aircraft involved in the August 24, 2001, emergency landing in the Azores. The infractions resulted from the release of the aircraft back into service without having the maintenance completed in accordance with required procedures.

As part of its ongoing review and monitoring of Air Transat's operations, Transport Canada also announced that, as a precautionary measure, it is limiting Air Transat's Extended Range Twin Engine Operations for all aircraft, effective immediately. The new limits require all Air Transat twin engine aircraft to remain within a maximum of 90 minutes of suitable en-route airports between the point of departure and the destination - the limit normally granted to entry-level air operators. Affected aircraft in the Air Transat fleet now include Airbus A310s and Boeing 757s.

This latest measure does not alter the current limits placed on Air Transat's Airbus A330 aircraft which require them to remain within 60 minutes of suitable airports until refresher training sessions on extended range operations are completed. Once training is completed, the airline's Airbus A330 aircraft will also be moved to the 90-minute limit.

"Transport Canada is committed to taking whatever action is required to protect the Canadian travelling public," said Mr. Collenette. "While we are satisfied with the measures taken to date by the company in response to the occurrence in the Azores, and with the preliminary information coming from Transport Canada's safety audit, we believe it is appropriate to place these limitations on Air Transat while we continue to monitor its operations."

Transport Canada continues to support the investigation underway by the Portuguese authority into the contributing factors and causes of the occurrence and will respond to its findings as required.

_________________
CBC News
Air Transat maintenance work questioned
Last Updated Thu Aug 30 12:49:26 2001

MONTREAL - Air Transat's maintenance work on the jet that glided to an emergency landing at the Azores Islands is being questioned by the companies that built the plane and its engines, Airbus and Rolls Royce.

The airline said on Wednesday that it had replaced the right engine on the Airbus A-330 less than a week before it failed last Friday after a fuel leak.

Michel Lemay

"It's not a repair, per se," said Michel Lemay, Air Transat spokesman. "It is just that the engine was replaced, and it's something that we do periodically on all aircraft."

But the work done on that particular job is being examined closely as investigators try to understand why Flight 236, with 304 passengers and crew on board, turned into a glider hundreds of kilometres from its Lisbon destination.

Fuel leaked from a crack in the right engine's fuel pipe, preliminary reports show.

Inspectors check the plane

"The fuel loss was from a crack in the number two engine fuel pipe. The crack was caused by contact with a pipe from the hydraulic pump," Rolls Royce said in a bulletin sent to airlines with planes using the Trent 700 engine.


There are 20 airlines flying 80 Airbus A-330s using the Trent 700. It's the only plane that uses the engine, said a Rolls Royce spokesperson.

Rolls Royce also said it had sent an earlier service bulletin warning its customers to make sure the pipes are separated.

In flight, the pipes could rub together, said aeronautical engineer Eric Van Blaeren of the University of Montreal.

"With many hours flying, you can have wear in one of the two pipes and you can have a crack induced by the friction," he said.

Airbus said on Wednesday that the right engine of the A-330 in question had the service bulletin's recommendations partially applied. The other engine on the jet complied with the bulletin.

If Air Transat's maintenance work is shown conclusively to have caused the initial problems of Flight 236, it won't be the first time the airline's service department has been in trouble.

In the past year, the airline has been fined six times for violations of Transport Canada standards, including one fine for major repairs that didn't conform with approved technical data.


But a Transport Canada spokesman says Air Transat is safe.

"Our inspections show operations to be safe," said Art LaFlamme.

There are as yet few clues as to why the left engine quit minutes after the right engine did.

_______________
 

Latest posts

Back
Top