Narrative:

During my rest break; I was notified that a passenger had noticed a fluid leak coming from the top of the left wing. The captain had requested I investigate. I inspected the wing and immediately noticed a stream of fluid emanating from the top of the left wing from the fuel cap. I returned to the flight deck. I'd already briefed the crew on this same situation having experienced it the month before on the same aircraft. We read through the QRH procedure but agreed it would not be prudent to shut down an engine and that it would make the situation worse. We reviewed the fom diversion guide. We agreed it was prudent to divert as we had no way of knowing how severe the leak was and we certainly didn't want to be over an ocean with fuel leaking. We would be landing overweight (even after dumping fuel); and began looking for airports with longer; dry runways. We felt ZZZZ was our best option and advised ATC. After some time; ATC advised us that ZZZZ would not take us for a fuel leak despite our [priority] status and they felt it was unusual for us to be passing other airports. We explained that we had assessed those airports and that there was either insufficient runway lengths or wet runways and that we were overweight. We landed in ZZZZ1 safely (originally we elected not to go there because of the wet runway but then dispatch indicated it was dry). Passengers seemed to be in good spirits until we got to baggage claim and then they were irritated by the slowness of getting their luggage. There was also some difficulty (because of staffing limitations); getting passengers to the busses despite there being numerous announcements over the airport PA system.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B767 flight crew reported a fuel leak that resulted in a diversion.

Narrative: During my rest break; I was notified that a passenger had noticed a fluid leak coming from the top of the left wing. The Captain had requested I investigate. I inspected the wing and immediately noticed a stream of fluid emanating from the top of the left wing from the fuel cap. I returned to the flight deck. I'd already briefed the crew on this same situation having experienced it the month before on the same aircraft. We read through the QRH procedure but agreed it would not be prudent to shut down an engine and that it would make the situation worse. We reviewed the FOM diversion guide. We agreed it was prudent to divert as we had no way of knowing how severe the leak was and we certainly didn't want to be over an ocean with fuel leaking. We would be landing overweight (even after dumping fuel); and began looking for airports with longer; dry runways. We felt ZZZZ was our best option and advised ATC. After some time; ATC advised us that ZZZZ would not take us for a fuel leak despite our [priority] status and they felt it was unusual for us to be passing other airports. We explained that we had assessed those airports and that there was either insufficient runway lengths or wet runways and that we were overweight. We landed in ZZZZ1 safely (originally we elected not to go there because of the wet runway but then dispatch indicated it was dry). Passengers seemed to be in good spirits until we got to baggage claim and then they were irritated by the slowness of getting their luggage. There was also some difficulty (because of staffing limitations); getting passengers to the busses despite there being numerous announcements over the airport PA system.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.