Posted on 01/24/2008 8:10:35 AM PST by Clive
My brother will probably be involved in dismantling this jet.
I had heard of this incident but it sounded like an urban legend. I’m glad to see it was a real story after all.
I think the pilots were given medals and fired on the same day.
Air Canada Aircraft #604 was repaired sufficiently to be flown out of Gimli two days later. After approximately $1M in repairs, consisting primarily of nose gear replacement, skin repairs and replacement of a wiring harness it re-entered the Air Canada fleet. To this day Aircraft #604 is known to insiders as "The Gimli Glider." The avoidance of disaster was credited to Capt. Pearson's "Knowledge of gliding which he applied in an emergency situation to the landing of one of the most sophisticated aircraft ever built." Captain Pearson strongly credits Quintal for his cockpit management of "Everything but the actual flight controls," including his recommendation of Gimli as an landing spot. Captains Pearson and Quintal spoke at the 1991 SSA Convention in Albuquerque about their experiences. Pearson was, at the time, still employed and flying for Air Canada, and occasionally flying his Blanik L-13 sailplane on the weekends; he has since retired to raise horses. Maurice Quintal is now an A-320 Pilot for Air Canada,and will soon be captaining 767's; including Aircraft #604. Copyright 1997 WHN
Named after a Tolkein dwarf?
Don't they have fuel gauges?!
Amazing.
I’m far from a landlubber Yank but I’d never heard of this incident.
If I were the pilot I would flinch every time I heard a sound similar to that warning!
It has been reported that, following Air Canada's internal investigation, Captain Pearson was demoted for six months, and First Officer Quintal was suspended for two weeks. Three maintenance workers were also suspended.[9] However, both pilots continued to work for Air Canada, and in 1985 were awarded the first ever Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Diploma for Outstanding Airmanship.[10]
And here's the "final flight":
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but damned few old, bold pilots.
Anon.
Sooooo.....
Does this mean they didn't have the kind of simple fuel gauge that any Cessna would have?
Excellent!
Learned “unit cancellation” at an early age. Would have prevented this problem. Guess they stopped teaching it.
“Air Transat Flight 236”
Don’t they put fuel gauges in these things?I mean really-so what if they didn’t put enough fuel in the tanks,wouldn’t the flight engineer get a clue long before the plane ran dry?
unit cancellation
We called it “Dimensional Analysis”, but if you don’t know the difference between metric and imperial tons, it won’t help you.
I remember flipping through the book about this.
A number of people were seriously hurt because the crew was so panicked on landing that they were shoving people out the after slides, which, as you can see from the photo, pointed straight down due to the nose wheel’s having collapsed.
Boy, I remember this incident. Everything that can go wrong went wrong and the plane became the world’s largest and heaviest glider. Instead of acknowledging the pilot and crew as heroes, Air Canada decided to suspend them and claim “pilot error” or “human error” or other such nonsense. It wasn’t until much later that they were cleared and recognized for the heroes they were.
Glad to see the old bird is still around but sad she has to spend the rest of her days in the Boneyard. She should be in a museum but she’s too darn big.
I remember this incident; it was the few times I have ever seen the entire press corps at a news conference give anyone a standing ovation. Here’s the tie in to today: The only other time I saw such adulation from the press corps was George Romney’s final press conference as governor of Michigan.
The plane will probably stay in the desert until they can find another buyer, probably for operation in a third world country or possibly for conversion to a freighter.
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