Air France 736: They Climbed With a Massive Fuel Leak and No One Stopped Them

Air France Flight 736: The Fuel Leak That Almost Turned an A330 Into a Fireball

In this video, we uncover the terrifying chain of events behind Air France Flight 736, an Airbus A330 that lifted off from Brazzaville on New Year's Eve 2020, heading to Paris. What began as a normal overnight flight slowly turned into a hidden emergency in cruise. A tiny maintenance detail, buried inside the left engine, started draining tonnes of fuel into the air and pushed the aircraft closer and closer to a disaster that should have ended in flames.

The most shocking part is not the leak itself. It is how an experienced crew, with thousands of hours, repeatedly chose to override the checklist and trust their instincts instead.

Why did they keep the leaking engine running?
Why did they land with boiling hot brakes while fuel was pouring out nearby?
And how did this flight not end in a runway inferno?

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✈️ The Incident

After recent heavy maintenance in China, the A330 departed Brazzaville with 136 passengers, three pilots, eight cabin crew, and two maintenance technicians on board. Engine number one had a hidden problem. A fuel hose flange was not correctly mounted, which slowly turned a simple fitting into a dangerous leak.

At first, everything looked normal. Takeoff was smooth. The climb to flight level 380 was uneventful. Then the captain did the first fuel check and noticed something wrong. About 1.4 tonnes of fuel appeared to be missing. Minutes later, the loss grew, a fuel imbalance formed, and all signs pointed to a leak on the left side.

The paper fuel leak checklist was opened. The very first line was clear. Land as soon as possible and shut down the engine on the suspected leak side. But the crew hesitated. They had alternates nearby. They still had plenty of fuel. They did not like the idea of shutting down an engine at cruise. So they tried to manage the situation on their own terms.

Fuel kept leaking. The imbalance increased. The aircraft continued flying north. The closer they got to N'Djamena, the more they convinced themselves that they could keep both engines running until landing.

🔥 The Investigation

When the aircraft finally diverted to N'Djamena, the danger was at its peak. The A330 was landing on a shorter runway, with a strong tailwind, flaps 3, higher speed, and a leaking engine that had already lost more than 5 tonnes of fuel.

Heavy braking pushed the brake temperature up toward 300 degrees, then 600 degrees after taxi. At the same time, fuel was still pouring from engine one, flowing in exactly the area where overheated brakes could have ignited it instantly.


Airbus had already identified the flange design issue years earlier. The updated part existed, but the older design was still being used. The BEA concluded that the maintenance error created the leak, but the real danger came from human decisions in the cockpit.

The only reason this did not turn into an in-flight fire or runway fireball was a rare fuel concentration around the leak that was too rich to ignite. That was not skill. It was luck.

📌 In this video, we break down:

How a misfitted fuel hose on an A330 led to a massive leak

Why the crew ignored multiple checklist steps to shut down the engine

How tailwind, hot brakes, and leaking fuel created a perfect fire scenario

What investigators found in the fuel system and maintenance history

Why Airbus changed the hardware and procedures after the incident

How Air France's cockpit culture came under fire in the final report

What this near disaster teaches about human factors and overconfidence in aviation

If you are fascinated by aviation incidents, cockpit decision making, and real crash investigations, this breakdown will show you how close Flight 736 came to becoming another headline tragedy.

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