Air Transat Flight 236 was an Air Transat route between Toronto and Lisbon. On August 24, 2001 the flight ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean with 291 passengers on board.
Without fuel, an airplane's engines cannot operate, to provide thrust or power the electrical generators. As the Airbus is a fully fly by wire design, without operating engines the plane is dependent on the emergency ram air turbine to allow the aircraft to be flown.
The emergency turbine deploys automatically in the event of power loss, and provides enough power to operate the flight controls, basic instrumentation and radio. However many important systems are not available in this situation, including flaps and main brakes. Additionally, an aircraft without operating engines can not use reverse thrust to slow down.
Fortunately, the pilots on the airplane, C-GITS, an Airbus A330, were able to glide the plane to a landing at Terceira Island in the Azores. The incident had no fatalities, but there were some minor injuries.
The cause of the accident was a fuel leak in one of the two engines. The pilots had noticed a fuel imbalance between the fuel tanks in the left and right wings of the aircraft, and had attempted to remedy this by opening a cross-feed valve between the tanks. Unfortunately this only caused fuel to be wasted from both tanks. Although pilot error was listed as one of the causes for the incident, it should be noted that it was the skill of the pilots which allowed the flight to land without fuel and causing only minor injuries and damages to the airplane (which is still in service). The pilots returned to a heroes' welcome in the Canadian press.
The happy outcome of the incident was also due to the flight being rerouted on a more southerly route across the Atlantic.
A documentary in the "Mayday" series called "Flying on Empty" was made about this incident but is not currently airing in North America. The National Geographic Channel's documentary series Air Crash Investigation also covered the incident in series 1 episode 6 entitled Flying on Empty.
The incident bears resemblance to another incident involving a Canadian airline, the Gimli Glider involving a 1983 emergency landing without fuel.
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