Air Transat's two-pilot crew faced the world's first glide descent and landing in a digital fly-by-wire airliner. The crew had an Airbus checklist for the "all engines flamed out" situation. The ram air turbine provided electrical power to essential services and also hydraulic power to the primary "green" circuit only. The windmilling engines would have provided some hydraulic power to the other two circuits, according to an A330 operator, provided that the crew had not pulled the engine fire handles, which they had no reason to do.
Flight controls were operating in "direct law", which means that the pilots' sidesticks moved the control surfaces as if the aircraft had conventional controls, but there was no flight envelope protection. The crew put the gear down, but did not select the slats/flaps to "flap one" as advised in the checklist, probably because doing so would have reduced the aircraft's gliding range. In good early morning visibility the pilots landed the aircraft on the centreline of Lajes' 3,310m (10,870ft) runway and brought the aircraft to a halt with about 800m to run. All tyres burst, and fire crews extinguished landing gear fires while an emergency evacuation of all passengers was carried out.
Source: Flight International
