Interesting news report with video of the "Gimli Glider" here. Apparently the pilot converted kg's to lb's, and had half as much fuel as he thought he did. D'oh.
http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-69-240-1155-20/that_was_then/life_society/gimli_glider
From what I read, it was the ground crew that screwed up and loaded the wrong amount in, and since the "fuel gauge" computer wasn't working, the pilot didn't know.
All in all, he managed to get safely get a 767 down with no thrust and only the ram air turbine generator providing power. From what I've read about the incident, he should not have been able to get the big airliner to glide nearly as far as he did. He obviously departed the recognized "recommended flight envelope" in order to do this. An Airbus product would have (assuming the control system was still getting power, ha ha) followed the max glide slope programmed into it and crashed since there is no override.
This was shortly after the Canadians "went Metric." Who ever did the calculations was probably on the old system yet.