SNAFU with Ed Helms Adam Scott and Air Transat Flight 236
Mar 4, 2026
Adam Scott, award-winning actor from Parks and Recreation and Severance, joins to explore the Azores Glider: a midair crisis when Air Transat Flight 236 lost both engines. They cover maintenance missteps, a worsening fuel leak, the eerie glide without power, the RAT saving vital systems, and the tense manual approach and evacuation. Conversation mixes suspense with aviation drama.
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Missing Service Bulletins Caused Faulty Installation
- The replacement Rolls-Royce engine lacked certain modern updates and came with a note to retrofit parts later, while technicians couldn't access service bulletins.
- That missing SB guidance led to improper routing/separation of fuel and hydraulic lines during installation.
Night Reroute After Inflight Fuel Imbalance
- Air Transat Flight 236 departed Toronto for Lisbon with 306 people aboard and flew normally for about 3 hours 45 minutes before pilots noticed a fuel imbalance.
- The crew rerouted toward Lajes in the Azores after detecting the imbalance and asked a flight attendant to inspect the wings at night with a flashlight.
Fuel Balancing Made The Leak Worse
- The pilots misdiagnosed a real fuel leak as a sensor fault and followed a fuel-balance procedure that worsened the leak.
- Pumping fuel from the left wing into a cracked right feed simply dumped fuel into the Atlantic until engines failed.
