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.
Just don't tell the elf.
What a story.
Hey, he flew right over my house!
Forgive my engineering ignorance but would the same kind of maneuver be equally possible in one of the new entirely fly-by-wire planes where the pilot’s controls are not connected by hydraulics to the engines and flaps and so forth? Same question with respect to the recent BA crash landing?
Sounds like NASA contractors. What was the one Mars orbiter mission they blew calculating in miles rather than km (or vice versa)?
“It’s unclear how long the jet will stay in the California desert. Aircraft maker Boeing Co., Mount Royal College in Calgary, engine maker Pratt & Whitney and the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa have expressed interest in acquiring the Gimli Glider, Mr. Pearson said."
So she may still end up in a museum.
I recall this happening, but what amazes me more is that they are already bone-yarding 767’s...
I know there are older airframes out there still doing certified commercial work in both pax and cargo on a regular schedule, and theyse 767’s are way less than half their age...
Makes you wonder about the durability of these newer designs...
Good point. I guess it involves a lot of complicated engineering, accounting and tax questions.
The article garbled the story. The computer was fine but the fuel gauges were not functioning, so they manually entered the fuel load into the computer. Because the fuel load was miscalculated, the computer assumed that there was enough fuel for the flight. The fuel gauges were not on the MEL because there is a “critical fuel” warning device on a separate system that was still functioning, and the regs only require fuel indicators to be accurate at “E”.
7682 litres x 0.803 = 6169 kg
22300 kg – 6169 kg = 16131 kg
16131 kg ÷ 0.803 = 20163 litres
Between the ground crew and flight crew, however, they arrived at an incorrect conversion factor of 1.77, the weight of a litre of fuel in pounds. This was the conversion factor provided on the refueller’s paperwork and which had always been used for the rest of the airline’s imperial calibrated fleet. Their calculation produced:
7682 litres x 1.77 = 13597 ‘kg’
22300 kg – 13597 ‘kg’ = 8703 kg
8703 kg ÷ 1.77 = 4916 litres
Instead of 22,300 kg of fuel, they had 22,300 pounds on board — only a little over 10,000 kg, or less than half the amount required to reach their destination. Knowing the problems with the FQIS, the Captain double-checked their calculations but was given the same incorrect conversion factor. All he did was check their arithmetic, inevitably coming up with the same figures.
Fuel gauges were not working. Like every other accident, it takes a “perfect storm” to create a disaster- in this case, if ANY of these factors had been different, the incident would never have occurred:
1. Fuel gauges not working.
2. Decision to proceed without fuel gauges.
3. Miscalculated fuel load.
Yes, and it's been done. An Air Transat A330 lost its entire fuel load over the Atlantic due to a broken line and glided to an airport in the Azores. It seems that us Canadians have an affinity for really BIG gliders.
I think it has nothing to do with durability and everything to do with economy. Today’s jets use a lot less fuel than those built just 15 years ago. Even so, this jet had a pretty good run- 27 years of service.
Airlines carry enough fuel to get them to the next fueling point and very little more. Carrying fuel wastes fuel. Plus many airlines buy where fuel is cheapest...
Complicated operational parameters...
Flight hours, per maintenance hours, vs. service life...
Sometimes they rotate aircraft frames from environments that are hard on the structure, to others that have a lighter workload etc etc...
Southwest has a pretty good system that keeps up their high volumn service to aircraft frames, and the routes they fly...
I think I flew on the last commercial flight of one of their 727’s they had in service years ago...
They still had the steward...uhhh, flight attendents that wore the short shorts...And they didn’t have male gender flight attendents back then either...
When I go to the Hooter’s restarants, I have Southwest Airlines flashbacks!!!
I would have been a happy camper if I was on a Southwest flight back then and we crash landed on a deserted island...But alas, SW rarely went over water...
But you know how that goes, right???
Yep...
My Dad’s KC-135 had way more flight hours and years on it...
Look up NASA’s “Vomit Comet” (you’ll see why)...I actually got to fly on the one they put up on stilts at the front of Ellington Field here in Houston...
Think about the stresses put on that airframe...The neat deal about that aircraft was that everything that would be considered a “down-gripe” was maintanable, and better yet a “known factor”...It flew almost everyday, with scheduled maintenance availabilities built into the schedule...The “930” airframe flew for over 20 years doing that stuff...
Good times...
Your mention of the “Vomit Comet” gave me a flashback to my misspent youth. Here in Toronto, there was a janitor at the Royal Ontario Museum who was a Luftwaffe veteran with flight time on the Me-163 Komet. He was one of the few Komet drivers to fly multiple sorties and survive- he figured out how to empty the tanks completely so it wouldn’t explode on landing. He sure had some interesting stories to tell...
They have dwarves in Manitoba? I spent a summer in Winnipeg a long time ago, never saw any.
In brightest day,
And darkest night...
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