The Top 40

Maybe it is a Canada thing? Canadian pilots screwed up and glided an Airbus into the Azores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236

This is coming to the cars youare going to buy. Some years back I was driving home and had picked up my 1 year old and 4 year old from the babysitters. It was in the desert and the temp was 116 in the shade and there was no shade. A couple miles from home and not to far from the middle of no where my car which was overheating stopped running and the battery was too dead to turn it over. My kids were crying, no one was driving by, I had no water and did I mention I was miles from home. But I had a 1967 standard shift car. I took a chance and put it into neutral with the key on and got out to push it on the very flat road. Got it up to maybe 5-6 mph and jumped in and put it into 2nd and popped the clutch. It started, much to my suprise. I eased it home without stopping for anything and thanked my lucky stars I had a standard shift car. Try that with your shiny new 2014 car. Most models don't even offer standard shift any more. But it's far worse. With all the various electrical and mechanical "safety" features there are easily a couple dozen things in your new car that would make it impossible to start if they go bad and they do go bad. Yes it's true we have cell phones now and you just call AAA but the point is how many of these new fangled problems waiting to happen are even necessary? It would be interesting to know how many people are killed and injured every year by a malfunctioning government mandated new fangled electric thing-a-mabob that really serves you the owner and driver very little purpose.

The Azores incident wasn't the pilots' fault. The maintenance staff had installed a similar but incorrect bracket to one of the fuel lines that allowed the line to rub against another part. Abrasion and fuel pressure did the rest, and the plane (an Airbus IIRC) suffered a fuel leak while over the middle of the Atlantic. The pilots were able to land safely at the Portuguese military airfield at Lajes, but a dead-stick landing in an airliner isn't my idea of a good time.

My 1991 S10, which I bought brand new in the fall of 1990 for $8,888.00, is a small V6 and a 5 speed transmission. Easiest standard shift in the world to drive. Even the slightest slope will let it roll and then I can dump the clutch in 2nd gear and start it right up. Everytime.

It's the first and most likely last brand new vehicle I'll ever own. Not that I can't afford one, I just can't justify the cost of a new vehicle. My S10 is bluebooked at about $400 and it does everything a $40k truck will do for me, 'cept better. Afterall, it has a proven 23 year history.

@Waltj the flight crew was faulted for not isolating the engine with a dramatic fuel leak from the entire fuel load available. Had they isolated that engine they were looking at a single-engine approach to an alternate. No big deal. They are heroes for saving the aircraft and passengers, but it need not have been a heroic episode, just an inconvenience.

@Scott M: True enough, they switched fuel from the good tanks to the leaky one, thinking they had a faulty fuel gauge rather than a major leak, compounding their problem. And I agree that the key to making their situation an inconvenience instead of a mortal danger would have been an early recognition of the actual problem. At least this one turned out ok.