The Gimli Glider

While looking through the aeronautical information that has caught my attention over the last few days, I found a story about an airplane landing every bit as tense and thrilling as the recent splash landing in the Hudson River. This one happened 25 years ago.

One July 23, 1983, a Boeing 767-200 ran out of fuel 41,000 feet over Alberta province. The airplane had taken off with malfunctioning fuel gauges and the flight crew was aware of the problem. As a work around to the broken fuel gauges problem, the ground crew had dipped the tanks, that is, they put a stick in the tanks to visually read the amount of fuel the airplane was carrying. This was an accepted method of determining the amount of fuel onboard, though it required a second step, a calculation.

In the second step the crew was required to calculate the amount of fuel by applying a factor for the specific gravity of the fuel.

The crew did the calculation several times to be sure there was no error. They made the same mistake each time. Because the crew used the wrong conversion factor, the airplane had about half the fuel required to make its Montreal to Ottawa to Edmonton flight. Eight miles high there are few options. You can't watch the signs for the next gas station. Here is the start of what transpired onboard.

The passengers had just finished dinner when a warning light came on in the cockpit. The flight crew thought that they were dealing with a failed fuel pump in one wing tank when a second warning light came on. The crew immediately made plans to divert to Winnipeg as the left engine flamed out.

Pilots Bob Pearson and Maurice Quintal immediately began making preparations for a one engine landing in Winnepeg. Then another fuel light lit up. Two minutes more, just as preparations for the one engine landing were being completed, the warning system issued a sharp "bong" noise, an indication of the complete and total loss of both engines. The pilots said they had never heard the sound before.

The sound is not in the flight simulator.

After the "bong," things got quiet. Quiet at eight miles up isn't generally good. The fuel tanks were empty and both engines had flamed out.

Tomorrow, we'll continue with the story of the big, heavy jet airplane that had suddenly become a glider, a glider that was descending 2,000 feet per minute.