Airbus A330 - Incidents and Accidents

Incidents and Accidents

As of February 2012, the Airbus A330 had been involved in 13 major aviation occurrences, including six confirmed hull-loss accidents and two hijackings, for a total of 339 fatalities. The type's first fatal accident occurred on 30 June 1994 near Toulouse on a test flight when an Airbus-owned A330-300 crashed while simulating an engine failure on climbout, killing all seven on board. Airbus subsequently advised A330 operators to disconnect the autopilot and limit pitch attitude in the event of an engine failure at low speed. On 15 March 2000, a Malaysia Airlines A330-300 carrying incorrectly labeled corrosive chemicals suffered fuselage damage and was written off.

The type's second fatal accident, and first while in commercial service, occurred on 1 June 2009 when Air France Flight 447, an A330-200 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean 640–800 kilometres (350–430 nmi) northeast of the islands of Fernando de Noronha, with no survivors. Malfunctioning pitot tubes provided an early focus for the investigation, as the aircraft involved had Thales-built "–AA" models known to record faulty airspeed data during icing conditions. In July 2009, Airbus advised A330 and A340 operators to replace Thales pitots with equivalents manufactured by Goodrich. Investigators later determined that the inadequate response of the pilots to both a loss of airspeed data and subsequent autopilot disengagement resulted in Flight 447 entering into an aerodynamic stall.

On 12 May 2010, Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, an A330-200, crashed on approach to Tripoli International Airport, Libya, on a flight from OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa. Of the 104 people on board, all but one nine-year-old Dutch boy died. The aftermath of the 2011 Libyan civil war hampered the accident investigation.

The two hijackings involving the A330 have resulted in one fatality, namely the hijacker of Philippine Airlines Flight 812 on 25 May 2000 who jumped out of the aircraft. The hijacking of Sabena Flight 689 on 13 October 2000 ended with no casualties when Spanish police took control of the aircraft. On 24 July 2001, two unoccupied SriLankan Airlines A330s were destroyed amid an attack on Bandaranaike International Airport, in Colombo, Sri Lanka by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. On 25 December 2009, passengers and crew subdued a man who attempted to detonate explosives in his underwear on an A330-300 operating Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

Two A330 incidents due to in-flight malfunctions were survived by all on board. On 24 August 2001, Air Transat Flight 236, an A330-200, developed a fuel leak over the Atlantic Ocean due to an incorrectly-installed hydraulic part and was forced to glide for over 15 minutes to an emergency landing in the Azores. On 7 October 2008, Qantas Flight 72, an A330-300, suffered a rapid loss of altitude in two sudden uncommanded pitch-down manoeuvres while 150 km (81 nmi) from the Learmonth air base in northwestern Australia. After declaring an emergency, the crew landed the aircraft safely at Learmonth. It was later determined that the incident, which caused 106 injuries, 14 of them serious, was the result of a design flaw of the plane's Air Data Inertial Reference Unit and a limitation of the aircraft's flight computer software.