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On a Wing and a Prayer: Amazing Story of The Gimli Glider

damninteresting.com — On 23 July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 ran completely out of fuel at 41,000 feet, about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton (due to a misunderstanding of the metric system). The amazing story of how the powerless plane made a successful emergency landing at an abandoned airbase in Gimli, and the Captain with balls of steel.

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  • fitqueenb, on 07/31/2008, -0/+4That was a great "positive and successful landing, and happy ending story". Great Pilots!
  • RogerStrong, on 08/01/2008, -0/+1A few points to add:

    The cause of the incident was a lot more than "a misunderstanding of the metric system":
    - It was a brand new model of aircraft - the first Canadian airliner that used metric.
    - It was also the first without an engineer; it had only a pilot and copilot.
    - Air Canada hadn't specified who was take over the engineer's job of ensuring that the aircraft was properly fueled. The pilot thought it was the ground crew's responsibility, and the ground crew thought the pilot was responsible.
    - The aircraft had a faulty fuel sensor. But the ruled allowed them to measure the fuel pumped into the aircraft instead.
    - The aircraft took fuel in kilograms. The fuel truck used not kilograms or even pounds, but gallons. Two conversions were needed.
    - The fueling guy used the right conversion, but in the wrong place. But hey, the pilot is ultimately responsible and will check his work.
    - When the paperwork was shown to the pilot, he saw the familier conversion factor and didn't check futher. Because hey, the fueling guy is untimately responsible and knows his stuff.
    - The aircraft climbed unusually fast after takeoff (in hindsight due to lack of weigh,t due to lack of fuel). But it's a *767*. They *do* that.

    My brother was on a sailboat off Gimli and watched the 767 pass overhead. Year later I flew across the Atlantic on the same 767 - I confirmed the registration number on the nose with the one in the book on the subject, "Free Fall". I wondered at the time whether I was the only person on board who knew we were above the middle of the Atlantic on a plane that had already crashed once.
  • DeskFlyer, on 07/31/2008, -0/+1Great story and a one of the best classics out there; this aircraft was just retired in January of this year:

    http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html ...

    Lots of good photos of it here:

    http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?engin ...

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