Posted on 01/24/2008 8:10:35 AM PST by Clive
Air Canada employees will gather today in Montreal to bid farewell to the infamous Gimli Glider as it embarks on its final journey to the Mojave desert.
It is a graceful end for the storied Boeing 767 that could easily have become the subject of one of the worst aviation disasters in Canadian history were it not for the cool composure of the pilot, Captain Robert Pearson, and his First Officer, Maurice Quintal, 25 years ago. Both will be at the send-off today.
The story of the Gimli Glider began on July 23, 1983, when maintenance crews for Air Canada Flight 143 discovered that a shoddy soldering job had knocked out the computer that calculates how much fuel is needed to get the plane from Montreal to Edmonton, with a brief stopover in Ottawa.
Instead of cancelling the flight, the ground crews decided to do the calculations manually -- triple checking their work to ensure its accuracy. As it turns out, none of the ground crew had ever been trained to do this, but when the aircraft arrived safely in Ottawa, they felt assured of their work.
It was not until a warning signal began beeping at 41,000 feet somewhere over Red Lake, Ont., that the flight crew realized their error -- they had used imperial measurements to calculate how much fuel was needed rather than metric.
The first warning signal indicating that fuel had run out on one engine was followed by a "sharp bong," indicating both engines were out of steam. Because the electrical system was run off the engines, the power was soon knocked out in the cockpit, save for the manual controls, and the plane began plunging at 2,000 feet per minute.
Capt. Pearson was a trained glider pilot and immediately had his first officer begin calculating for the optimum gliding speed for an 80-tonne jumbo jet. After determining they would not make it to Winnipeg, First Officer Quintal suggested taking the plane down at a nearby Air Force base in Gimli, Man., where he once served.
Unbeknownst to the first officer, however, was that one of the airstrips -- where the plane would eventually land -- had become a drag-racing strip. On that day, crowds of campers had collected along the runway to watch go-cart races.
The plane's nose gear eventually came to a stop just 100 feet from where the group had collected, after its front landing gear collapsed on landing.
What could have been a major disaster turned into a miraculous story. The so-called Gimli Glider, having sustained only minor damages, entered back into service just two days later and has continued to fly since. That is until today when it makes its final journey to the so-called "boneyards" of the Mojave desert.
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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