What is Digg?151 Comments
- nuclearpenguins, on 10/12/2007, -2/+86Wow! What an amazing story! Those pilots have balls of steel.
- Habemus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+58>"Not to be rude, but what would you expect them to do, just say ***** it and go have a smoke? Of course they're going to do everything in their power to have a safe outcome, they pilots don't want to die just like everyone else!"
Reminds me of when a reporter asked Buzz Aldrin from Apollo11 how he would spend his last hours on the moon if the return engine failed and they were not able to take off from the lunar surface. He said "I would be out trying to repair the engine of course." - sockpuppets, on 10/12/2007, -2/+54Agreed, amazing story, thanks for posting it. I was blown away by the RAT, what great engineering that was.
- yeehawjared, on 10/12/2007, -0/+37http://images1.jetphotos.net/images/g/GimliGlider1.jpeg.jpeg.61449.jpg - better pic
- akyra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+36Love the last two sentences:
"An amusing side-note to the Gimli story is that after Flight 143 had landed safely, a group of Air Canada mechanics were dispatched to drive down and begin effecting repair. They piled into a van with all their tools. They reportedly ran out of fuel en-route, finding themselves stranded somewhere in the backwoods of Manitoba" - neggbird, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33Do a barrel roll.
- tabledesk, on 10/12/2007, -5/+29"I was blown away by the RAT, what great engineering that was."
Hah hah, _blown_ away! Get it? - bioskope, on 10/12/2007, -2/+26"In order to make their flight from Montreal to Ottawa and on to Edmonton, Flight 143's maintenance crew resorted to calculating the 767's fuel load by hand."
If i found anyone in the crew doing that in the flight that I am in, then you'd find me alternating between sobbing, praying and throwing up in the lavatory - mantic99, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24And I thought it sucked when I ran out of gas.
- FarcicalFart, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
A little more info. - barius, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20It crashed, and survived without loss of life. Hell ya that's the plane I want to ride!
- febryle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18Well, I used to bullseye womprats in my T-16 back home, too.
- lostlogic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19No. Fighters have HORRIBLE glide ratios. The faster a plane's top airspeed, the ***** its glide ratio (as a rule). This is because lift and drag are HIGHLY correlated. A plane which is designed for very high speeds requires very little drag, and can compensate for a low lift-to-speed ratio by its high speed. Conversely, a plane which is designed for low speeds doesn't care as much about drag and requires a high lift-to-speed ratio to stay in the air.
- bluemist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17From the Wiki article:
"Curiously the entire incident was almost repeated on August 15, 2006 when the same aircraft (604) reported an inflight shutdown of one of the engines. Air Canada flight 1171 made a safe single engine landing at just after 12N at Winnipeg International Airport with 153 passengers and crew on board."
Man, the plane may be cursed. - vegittoss15, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18@djSyndrome:
Space shuttles land gliding to earth. The engines they have onboard create too much thrust to use for regular flight. - Flashman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Giving credit where it's due, this article has been plagiarised from its original source:
http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html
Contains this funny footnote: "An amusing side-note to the Gimli story is that after Flight 143 had landed safely, a group of Air Canada mechanics were dispatched to drive down and begin effecting repair. They piled into a van with all their tools. They reportedly ran out of fuel en-route, finding themselves stranded somewhere in the backwoods of Manitoba" - zioxide, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17"The space shuttle also doesn't run out of fuel very often."
The shuttle doesn't use engines when landing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Landing
"In the lower atmosphere the Orbiter flies much like a conventional glider, except for a much higher descent rate, over 10,000 feet (3 km) per minute. It glides with a ratio of 4:1. At approximately Mach 3, two air data probes, located on the left and right sides of the Orbiter's forward lower fuselage, are deployed to sense air pressure related to vehicle's movement in the atmosphere." - GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15"While the space shuttle is *in flight* - like the 767 was when it ran out of gas - it does use fuel. Were it to run out of fuel in space, it would have no way to position itself for re-entry."
Dude, come on. The space shuttle never "flies" like the 767 does, it takes off pointing straight up, and eventually eases its way on its back until it's in orbit. Once it's in orbit, the three main engines shut off are off for the remainder of everything. The shuttle stays at 17,000 mph for the remainder of the trip because it is constantly "falling" into orbit around the earth.
There are miniature rockets that maneuver the shuttle around, but they're useless for powered flight Make no mistake about it, what those pilots did was pretty amazing. - radu79, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13The space shuttle is designed for gliding on reentry. It has full hydraulic power for manuvering, all the onboard sensors are working, etc.
This plane was semi functional even as a glider. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Glide. Here is a similar accident, except this time it ran out of fuel..... in the middle of the ocean, an Airbus A330. The plane, I believe, got the record for the longest commercial jet glide ever. Pilots still work for Air Transat. I saw a documentary on Air Emergency on the NG channel. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236 - JohnChapin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11That's really cool... great work by those pilots.
I just started learning to fly recently and this is a skill that they work on early in training even in small airplanes. The first thing that you do is establish your optimum glide speed, where the aircraft is going to travel the furthest as it decends. Then you look around and find a place to put it. Hopefully you make a good choice and can hit the spot that you pick. The first time I ever did this, I did pretty well. The second time... not so much. I ignored a perfectly good 3 mile long drag strip and a grass runway and opted for a bumpy and uneven field. Which goes to show that knowing the area you're flying through pays off. Of course in training, they take you down to about 500 feet above the deck and then throttle back up.
The aircraft I have been training in has a really long glide ratio (Diamond Aircraft DA-20). One of my instructors other students was able to fly the entire pattern around an airport and land with the engine completely at idle.
On another semi-related note... The former air strip in the story saved lives that day. In 2003 Chicago's Mayor Daly demolished the runway at Meig's Field in an illegal midnight raid. That put lives in danger on that night, and continues to do so today. Preserving airports is not only good business, it's a matter of safety. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13This, and all the other metric/imperial problems is the reason the world should use metric for anything crticical like the Mars rover, etc. Backward countries still stick with arcane systems and use pounds, miles, feet, inches, quarts, gallons and similar idiotic measures invented 2500 years ago. Times have changed. Get with it. 2500 years ago, no one would fall out of the sky if you miscalculated fuel or distance.
- gummih, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10"After the "bong," things got quiet. " - yes, that can happen
- LarianLeQuella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Yeah, they entered the wight as pounds, but the computer thought it was KG, so the readouts didn't give the pilots the clue that something was amiss
- DNABeast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11This is one of the best stories I've heard in ages.
It makes me want to re-edit it and tell it to random strangers in the street. - LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It's not flying. It's falling, with style!
- MeatBiProduct, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9if you think a lot of people die on the highway now - lets give soccer moms air vehicles twice the size of their current SUV's and see how many people get killed in a year.
- vdubbin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9It happens on commercial flights everyday. Of course you're never going to know if your plane's fuel indicators are inoperative. I used to work at a major international airport for the fuel contractor doing the exact same thing that was described. We did it at least once a day. I've never seen an instance when the entire indicating was inop. At most two indicators would be dead before the Airline took the plane out of service. Air Canada should have taken the correct action and delayed the flight to do a tail swap. I bet it's policy now.
- omgbanana, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10God almighty. If the equipment is broken, just ground the plane.
Some people get pissed when flights are delayed. I was delayed six hours and ended up stranded at my destination for another hour and a half while my friend skipped out on work early to drive 45 minutes to pick me up.
I was generally okay with it. We were delayed due to equipment not functioning properly. I'd wait all ***** day if it meant being sure that that thing will STAY in the air once it's there. - selectodude, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I remember that. That was pathetic and low what Mayor Daley did.
- bitt3n, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13and praying to that religion comes in handy when you're falling out of the sky
- Namco, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Hey, I thought when a plane runs out of gas, it instantly comes to a complete stop just inches from the ground. Guess I watch too much Bugs Bunny.
- stealthduke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I've flown on this particular aircraft several years ago, from Vancouver to Toronto. It didn't really "crash" -- in aviation, it's referred to as a forced landing. Repairs to the landing gear and underside of the aircraft, and it's in perfect flying condition. Sure beats paying $120 million for a brand new aircraft.
- MeatBiProduct, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I don't say this often but that was a great read! I don't digg often but I dugg this.
- Crucifix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7"The flight crew had never been trained how to perform the drip calculations. To be safe they re-ran the numbers three times to be absolutely, positively sure the refuelers hadn't made any mistakes;each time using 1.77 pounds/liter as the specific gravity factor. This was the factor written on the refueler's slip and used on all of the other planes in Air Canada's fleet. The factor the refuelers and the crew should have used on the brand new, all-metric 767 was .8 kg/liter of kerosene."
I'm totally baffled. The article distinctly states (not in this quote per se) that the gravity factor constant is what caused the miscalculation.
1.77 pounds/liter EQUALS 0.8 kg/liter. - MrWhistler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+72000 or 2500 feet per minute sounds like it would feel fast, but when you're in a steady descent like that you'd be relatively unaccelerated, so you don't perceive much of a dropping sensation (I'm a pilot, I've done it many a time for training stuff).
The real thing I wonder about is if the pressurization system stayed online, because otherwise the passengers would have a nasty earache when the negative pressure valves (things that keep the cabin from being lower pressure than outside) broke open. - Caulfield, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6also, the miscalculation was due to an overlooked metric/imperial conversion. i can't say for civil aviation, but the rest of Canada is now far more comfortable with metric (whereas this event occurred in 1980, when the metric conversion was still recent) and I would imagine the probablity of such an error now would be far less.
- Frankie4Fingers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7"Air Transat accepted responsibility for the incident and was fined CAN$250,000 by the Canadian government which as of 2006 is still the largest fine in Canadian history."
So the repair people put in a bad part and they took responsibility for it and only paid $250k Canadian? That is ridicilous. Come on, they just about took the lives of hundreds of poeple because of their accident. Maintenance people need to be more careful. I would have filed a lawsuit if I were on that plane for the suffering and for the fact that I would never be able to fly again after that flight. - fjc8, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Perhaps they were using the 1.77 figure with kg.
- LarianLeQuella, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I used to practice dead-stick landings in the KC-135 (simulator) all the time. :) It's quite the confidence builder.
- cdmarcus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7What are you smoking? Big planes need hydraulic power for control, and there's very little of that when the engines fail and you're depending on airspeed to provide that pressure. Also, planes start to drop fast when there's no engine power, meaning you have very limited time to react. If a plane runs out of fuel, it's probably going to crash. And, it's NOT easy to fly with no engines. You need to minimize the rate at which you descend, while trying not to stall. And you can land without reverse thrust at most large runways.
- cdmarcus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It was actually a soldering problem. Soldering != welding.
- rocketryguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Amen Brother.
- brutalentropy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8And people want flying cars?!
- chasenyc, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10So hysterical, that's gotta be the greatest part of the story... Guess they didn't learn their lesson.
By the way, anyone else find it odd, that this plane is back up in the air? I mean I understand its an expensive plane, but I sure wouldn't want to be on that plane after it has crashed... - Herkguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Let me chime in with the other pilots (you can guess what I fly from my name), that you have no clue what you're talking about. It's only hard because of no reverse thrust? In my airplane, full reverse only changes your stopping distance ~300-500 feet. What makes this hard is the lack of systems, and the absolutely perfect energy management (airspeed vs. altitude) you need to put the airplane down on the runway. You remind me of the know-it-all dads I hear at every airshow pointing out the "bombs" (fueltanks) under my wings.
- Datael, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Haha yeah and it doesn't start falling until they actually notice that it's stopped and they look down!
- GTPilot, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@syndrome
you need atmosphere to 'glide' anyway.. space is more like floating, so of course it would use thrust to position itself for re-entry. after it's there though, it's a big heavy glider. - ehasley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@cdmarcus
You are correct that large aircraft like the 767 requires hydraulic power to be controled. Aircraft designers realized this and thats why they have back-up systems. In an engine out procedure a small turbine pops out from the bottom of the aircraft which supplies power and hydraulic pressure to critical systems on the aircraft. That is why when the aircraft's speed decreased the controls became "mushy" from the lack of air flowing into the turbine. Speaking of hydraulic systems, has anyone heard of the crash of United Airlines flight 232 in Souix City Iowa. The DC-10 has three engines, two on the main wings and one mounted high in the tail. The tail enigine exploded sending metal fragment through the main hydraulic lines and the two back-ups. The pilots were able to guide the plane to the runway using only the two working engines. 185 people of 232 survived because of the pilots efforts. Once again, the feat could not be recreated in a simulator. Here is the link.
http://www.airdisaster.com/special/special-ua232.shtml - Jonsey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Sorry to be nit picky, but I don't think planes are welded. They are riveted generally. Also, the glimli glider didn't have any sort of "welding problem". I believe the fuel sensor was broken so the pilots checked the minimum equipment list (MEL) and it allowed them to fly without it and manually calculate it (something that is now forbidden based on this). Then they messed up the calculation.
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