Air Emergency (2003–…): Season 5, Episode 3 - Gimli Glider - full transcript
A brand-new 767
A catastrophic failure at 26,000 ft
Air Canada 143, go ahead
I just lost both engines
Holy cow!
I am talking to a dead man
The crew is out of options
and running out of time
They are at the controls of a 95 ton jet...
...that is quickly falling from the sky.
This is a true story
It is based on official reports
and eyewitness accounts
In placid skies over Central Canada
Air Canada Flight 143 is just passed
a halfway-mark of its journey
from Montreal to Edmonton Alberta
The plane is carrying 61 passengers
and 8 crew-members
It is July, 23th 1983
Rick Dion is an Air Canada maintenance engineer
I was going to Edmonton
with my wife Pearl
and my young son Chris, who was 4 years old
This was the beginning of a 2 week vacation for us
we were all pretty excited about
going on this new airplane.
Compliment of the Captain
This was my first flight on the modern 767
The company has just acquired them
I was interested in going to the cockpit
to see all this new technology
fit in with the work that I did on aircraft
The Captain on this flight is Bob Pearson
He is 48 years old and
he spent more than 15,000 hours in the air
His first officer is Maurice Quintal,
who has more than 7,000 hours of flying time
Come on in
Pardon me, gentlemen
I knew Bob Pearson from the small flying club
that I attended in St Lazare
He was one of the local pilots there,
that used to do some gliding
He also flew the Ultra-light Lazairs
We had departed heading North-West
a nice, clear sunny day in July
We were at a 39,000 ft
There were few airplanes
that flew that high in 1983
We requested 41,000 ft, which got us
further above the jet-stream out of the West
The crew may have accumulated
a lot of hours in the air
but very few in this plane
It is Boeing's latest and most advanced
wide-body jet: the 767
An army of microprocessors in
the belly of the plane automates so many functions
that the flight-engineer's job has been eliminated
This is one of four 767's
that Air Canada has recently acquired
The plane itself has only 150 hours on it.
Quite a difference here, huh
The cockpit is different in that all
the old instrumentation that we were accustomed to
Mostly was all gone
It was all CRT display
like small TV screens
It was a new high-tech airplane,
which involve quite a change for the crew
and maintenance personnel, people handling it
This was a new aircraft
for both the Captain and I
At that time,
I had 75 hours on that airplane
Everything was new for me
Pilots and maintenance crews
are both still getting to know this airliner
Captain Pearson explains to Dion
how he handled a small problem with
the engines on an earlier flight.
Fuel pressure
Why would that be?
A warning alerts the crew
to critically low pressure
at one of the plane's fuel pumps.
The 767 has three main fuel tanks:
two in the wings which are always used
and one in the CENTER
only used on long distance flights.
Electric fuel pumps draw fuel from each tank
and feed it to the plane's 2 engines
The low pressure warning could mean
that one of the pumps needs maintenance
but it could also be a more serious issue:
a lack of fuel to be pumped
Another low fuel pressure warning sounds
this one from another fuel pump
on the plane's left side
Pearson's Flight Management Computer
tells him he should have plenty of fuel
for the remainder of the trip
The 767 also has separate digital fuel gauges
but on this flight,
those gauges are out of service
The warnings don't make sense
I used to be involved with transferring fuel
and I know that when you're
trying to empty a tank
It will start flashing periodically,
and than the pump will re-prime
and then later go out
In this case,
it appeared to do exactly the same thing
Captain Pearson knows,
that if the left tank is running low
the right tank may be low as well
Let us head for Winnipeg...
...now!
Pearson wants to land as soon as possible
in case he is running out of fuel.
The crew is still more than 700 miles away
from their original destination, Edmonton Alberta
The nearest major airport is Winnipeg, Manitoba
a mere 120 miles away
We're showing lots of fuel on board
on our Flight Management Computer
and normal fuel checks cross checked
with our fuel on our flight-plan
We elected to divert the flight to Winnipeg,
where Air Canada has a main maintenance base
Air Canada 143
Ron Hewett has 20 year experience
as a radar controller.
Yes, sir, we have a problem
We are going to...
...a requesting direct Winnipeg
Air Canada 143 cleared
Take position direct Winnipeg
cleared to maintain 6000 descend
He didn't tell us what the problem was
and it is none of my business
Give him what he wants,
get everybody out of his way
That is about what we do
Pearson now begins to descend from 41,000 ft
The low pressure warnings are spreading
to more and more of the fuel pumps
Quintal instructs the cabin crew
to prepare for an emergency landing
I think we have problems with our fuel system
We are diverting to Winnipeg
All flight attendants to front galley please
I hope these are just false warnings
Rick, can you think of anything we haven't done?
OKAY...
... we've lost the left engine
Losing an engine erases any doubt:
Flight 143 is in fact running out of fuel
OKAY, checklist
single engine landing
Pearson is trained to land a 767 with one engine
No one has ever tried landing with none
He scrambles to get his plane down,
so that he doesn't become the first
With only one engine powering Air Canada 143,
and with the possibility of
the other engine shutting down
the crew prepares the passengers for the worst
Ladies and gentlemen,
this is your in charge flight attendance speaking
Due to mechanical problems
we will be preparing for an emergency landing
Please, return to your seats
and fasten your seatbelts
Your crew is fully trained
to deal with the situation
and as you may have noticed
some crew-members have already
started to prepare the aircraft
I had no idea, like the rest of my crew-members,
that there was a problem with fuel
I had no idea why we were going to Winnipeg
Approach and landing
Flaps will be 20
As they are doing that drill,
the right hand fuel pump low pressure light
was flashing as well
much like it did on the left
They were quite busy
carrying out the first engine out
not watching the pump-lights
which was right at my eyebrows
I knew that there was a shutdown, too
What was that?
How come I have no instruments?
Our beautiful colour engine and
flight instrument displays...
...simply went black
It is exactly what Pearson had feared.
He has lost both engines.
At 26,500
still 75 miles from the nearest major airport...
...he is out of fuel
Air Canada 143, go ahead.
We just lost both engines
When both engines shut off,
I think holy...
I am talking to a dead man
It is highly unlikely
that anybody is going to survive this
I could see them trying to make a turn
and spinning in
An airplane's engine doesn't only provide thrust
They also generate the power
needed to manipulate the plane.
It would be completely uncontrollable,
but modern airliners are like a Swiss army knife
with one last blade hidden away.
In the event of a loss of power,
they automatically deploy the RAT,
or Ram Air Turbine
It is spring-loaded
and the propeller that drives
the small hydraulic pump
is about size of a propeller
you would see like on a little Cessna 150
This arm catapults down into the slipstream
This propeller starts to turn,
drives this hydraulic pump
and gives you basic systems
It was pretty quiet, flying without motors
Pearson knows the time is running out
He needs directions to the closest landing strip
143, This is a mayday
We require a vector
on to the closest available runway
But the loss of the plane's engines
has had an unexpected consequence at ATC
They're gone
They were right here
We have lost them on the screen
I need primary radar
143, We have lost your transponder return
in our attempt to pick up your target now
We work on transponders
it is called secondary radar.
We take the pilot's signal to ping the aircraft
Commercial jetliners are equipped
with a transponder
a device that transmits coded information
which ATC use to determine the plane's location
But when Flight 143 lost its second engine
only a small number of items got back up power
The transponder was not one of them
so the plane disappeared from Hewett's screen
Flight 143 is somewhere East of Winnipeg
but no one knows exactly where,
or how far it is from the airport.
In spite of its enormous weight,
a 767 doesn't plunge from the
sky when it looses its engines
its aerodynamic properties keep it in the air,
but slowly coasting to earth
I was trying to figure
how many miles we were moving ahead
versus how many thousands of feet
we were dropping.
But Quintal doesn't have the instruments
which provide the information he needs
to make that calculation.
Since he lost the plane's signal,
Hewett cannot give Quintal that information either
Controllers hurriedly work to rig up a way
to find the plane
Just before landing, you will hear the command:
'brace for landing'
Brace immediately, and stay braced
until the plane comes to a complete stop
There are two was to brace:
1. Bend Forward:
raise your arms and ends against
Bryce Bell is a businessman
on his way home to Edmonton
As soon as they announced that we were making
a non-scheduled stop in Winnipeg
I immediately wished I hadn't had the two drinks
that I had had
because I thought: You are going
to have a split second here
and this plane is going
to explode in flame
and the decision you make in that split second
will depend on how alert you are
Because their modern equipment
cannot see Air Canada 143
the controller switched to old fashioned radar
which doesn't need a transponder to locate planes
I got to turn up my true radar
(the reflective radar)
which is not nearly as good
and we don't use that at all
OKAY, I've got it
65 from Winnipeg, 45 from Gimli
143, we have you at 65 miles from Winnipeg
and approx 45 miles from Gimli
For the first time since losing power,
the pilots know their distance to Winnipeg
We gaan gezellig naar Winnipeg
Quintal, however, thinks that Gimli is a safer bet
Gimli, Manitoba has
a decommissioned air force base
It is about 20 miles closer than Winnipeg
As luck would have it, Maurice Quintal
trained at Gimli while in the armed forces
He knows it well
45 miles to Gimli
There is long runway
Is there emergency equipment at Gimli?
Negative emergency equipment at all,
just one runway available, I believe.
No control tower and no information on it
Pearson must consider
the possibility of a crash landing
If he has any chance of making it to Winnipeg,
which has full emergency support
he knows he must try for it.
OKAY, then we would prefer Winnipeg
Fine, 143, continue your present heading
It was about regrets
Things I hadn't done in my life
It was about ways I've treated the odd person
here or there that I wish it more gently
It was about how stupid I was
at some of the things
I used to make big issues out of
that are so insignificantly
when it really comes down to
what real reality is about:
It was pretty devastating.
And I remember telling a mother with a baby
and I had...
My daughter Victoria
telling this woman that it will be okay
and I did
I was so proud of myself
that I could be so straight with her
and tell her that it was going to be alright
and really looking her in the eyes
OKAY, how far from the field are we now
You are 35 miles...
...39 miles from Winnipeg
Now that controllers can see Flight 143 on radar
they can provide Quintal
with the information he needs
to figure out if he can
glide as far as Winnipeg
1.5
About 8500 ft above the ground,
Captain Pearson can see his destination
Winnipeg's Airport is less than 35 miles away
We are visual
but the news from Quintal is not good
Bob,
Maurice was keeping track of our distance
by input from Winnipeg ATC
and out altitude
and calculated our profile
and came to the conclusion that...
...we might not make the
runway to Winnipeg
We can last maybe another 20 miles
We are not making Winnipeg
Quintal has calculated
that at the rate they are falling
they would hit the ground a full 15 miles
short of the runway
How far here from Gimli?
You are approx 12 miles from Gimli right now
Where is it?
On your right
Turn right to a heading of 345
I will say you have 10 miles to fly
OKAY, fine
We are going to go there
I am going to check up my family
You guys don't need me right now, huh?
When I went finally to sit down in my seat,
this is where I thought:
This is it
Landing gear down
First officer Quintal lowers the landing gear
Because there is no hydraulic power,
Quintal does what is known as a gravity drop
letting the gear's own weight drop and lock it
into place
The two main gear are heavy,
they fall immediately
and two green lights confirm they've locked
but the nose gear is lighter,
it doesn't lock
We could hear the main gear clearly
falling and locking
I was not aware
that the nose gear was not down and locked
It was the last minute and
if it is something that you cannot control...
...you don't talk about it,
you don't mention it
The main thing was:
bring the aircraft on the runway
5 miles to touchdown
We have the field inside
5 Miles from Gimli,
Pearson and Quintal finally
see a runway they can land on
but there is a problem
It is going to be too steep, too fast
Yeah,. I know
Pearson is almost at the runway,
but he is much too high above it
If he comes down at a normal descend rate,
he'll miss the landing-strip
but if he comes down steeply,
his plane will gather a dangerous amount of speed
he won't be able to stop
before the end of the runway
With a normal approach we have
leading edge and trailing edge flaps
which allow us to slow
the air-plane down
and fly at a slower speed, safely.
We did not have real flaps
as they run off the main hydraulic system
So, what are we going to do?
So we discuss we had two possibilities
One of them was to 360° turn
and lose the excess of altitude
On the other hand,
I thought, it would take about 3 minutes
and we were already descending
at a rate of 2500 ft/min
Only about 3000 ft
above the ground,
the plane doesn't have enough
altitude to make a full circle
It would hit the ground
before making it back to the landing strip
Pearson chooses a 2nd option
Well, I guess I 'll just slip it
Pearson decides to try a manoeuvre,
called a side slip
practically unheard of on commercial airliners,
but sometimes used by glider-pilots
and Bob Pearson has
a lot of experience flying gliders
I am just going to slip it down
till we are almost at the end of the runway
Side slipping involves
what is known as crossing the controls
Pearson plans to force the aircraft
into a sideways free-fall
allowing it to drop quickly
without increasing its forward airspeed
Pearson has never actually performed a side slip
in a commercial aircraft
but he is attempting one now
in a Boeing 767
The only way that I could control our speed
was to induce drag in the fuselage
by cross controlling
the rudder and the elevators on the tail
and the ailerons and the wingtips
and causing the aircraft into a configuration
Then, I can vary that
to increase or decrease our speed
or increase or decrease our descend rate
Pearson controls the plane's descend
by using his rudders and ailerons
to chance the angle of the plane
Crossing the controls involves
tipping the wings in one direction
but turning the aircraft in the opposite direction
putting it side ways into the oncoming air
As Flight 143 begins to drop towards the earth
Quintal is about to discover something
he did not expect
The runway he trained at 15 years ago
is no longer a runway
Captain Bob Pearson is out of fuel
out of engines, out of options
If he can't line up with the runway at Gimli,
he doesn't get a second chance
Pearson turns the yoke left
and pushes the rudders to the right
The plane slips...
...to its left
We were sitting in the CENTER,
which is the heart of the air-plane
so it is pretty solid there
I thought there is a real good chance here
that we'll be Al right
However, when he put the air-plane into a side-slip
all that went out the window was
If he hits the wing or something,
he starts to catapult and roll
that is not going to work anymore
The 767 loses altitude quickly,
ploughing sideways through the air
When I looked to the left of the aircraft,
I was looking directly on the ground
because the air-plane is angled quite,
maybe 60° of bank
The bank angle was quite high
and the nose of the aircraft was quite high
It was an awkward moment
If it was awkward for me,
I can imagine for the passengers,
it must really have felt odd
I saw a sand-trap from this golf-course
And I thought:
We are going to crash!
Pearson must maintain a crucial balance:
He has got to slow the plane enough
to be able to land safely
But if he slows down too much,
the airliner could lose his lift...
...and plummet to the ground
When a pilot is normally landing an air-plane
he is manoeuvring the flight controls
and operating the thrust levers...
...pretty continuously at most landings.
So, I was doing the same thing
(without the thrust levers)
This is where I thought at my daughter Victoria,
being alone with my husband
and how he was going to cope with our daughter
and how she was going to cope without having a mom
As they approach,
Pearson focuses on his target:
The threshold of the runway.
I got tunnel-vision like I have never had it before
It was just our speed and our relationship
with the threshold of the runway
But now, only hundreds
of feet from the ground,
Quintal sees that their troubles
are far from over
The Gimli landing strip has been converted...
...into a drag racing strip.
Today is Saturday
and it is not just a race-day.
It is a family day on the Gimli strip
Racing is done for the day,
but the airfield is filled with
members of the local sport-scar-club,
camping out with their families for the weekend.
Two children have decided
to peddle the length of the runway.
They don't hear the plane coming for them
without engines, it is silent
And one thing the 767 doesn't have...
...is a horn.
Brace, brace for landing
The nose hit with quite a bang on the runway
It was like a shotgun going off within feet
The front landing-gear gives out immediately
Pearson brakes hard, 2 tyres blow out.
The bottom of the right engine scrapes the runway.
I was a robot, no emotion at all
Finally, Pearson sees what is in their path
I looked up and could see two boys on bicycles.
They must have been probably a 1000 ft
down the runway for my position when I saw them
At one point,
I could see he raise his head
And his surprise
there is this big aircraft
I can still remember
the look of terror on their faces
So, they were close enough for me to see that.
With no nose-gear to steer with,
Pearson's only hope of driving
the plane left or right
is by varying the brake pressure
on the two main landing gear
That is where my heart
started to pitter patter a little bit
The kids panic and try to outrun a plane
that is travelling about 200 mph
I knew I couldn't take the air-plane
into these boys
and I was going to take it off
into the grass in the race-side
There were campers
along the West-side of the runway
that I didn't notice until after
we've touched down
The nose was on the ground
and I can still remember at the left side
people standing by their barbecues.
Dino Calvert is at the track with his friends
for a weekend of racing.
One of the gentlemen in the pits
suddenly jumped in his car, he took off
you don't drive like that in a pits usually
I looked up and all I could see was smoke rising
Pearson does all he can to stop the plane in time
Holy crow
The plane ploughs into a guard rail,
installed on the middle of the runway
17 minutes after running out of fuel,
Air Canada Flight 143 comes to a final stop
on the ground.
Somebody yelled: Yahoo! or something
and then people started applauding
We were so grateful, we made it!
When you believe you are going to crash,
you do believe that the air-plane
is going to break apart
You are going to have fire
EVACUATE!
Thick smoke is quickly filling the cabin
The crew doesn't take any chances:
They want everyone off the plane
as quickly as possible
There was a sense of joy
and then a panic
We've got to get out of here
Less than 2 months earlier,
an Air Canada DC-9 made a successful
emergency landing in Cincinnati
only to burst into flames on the tarmac
before all the passengers could get off:
23 people died.
The crew and passengers of this flight
want to avoid a similar faith
It took maybe just a few seconds
to come to a full hold on the runway,
but the cockpit was full of smoke
Passenger evacuation checklist
Fuel shut off
Cabin pressurized
Electrics off
Checklist complete
Time to get out of here
Come on guys, get a fire extinguisher
We grabbed a fire extinguisher on our way
You never go to a fire at a racetrack
without having a fire extinguisher with you
And we run up towards it
the doors open up and you see the chutes come of,
like a spider has growing legs
The plane ended up eventually standing almost
what appeared to be almost on its nose
When I opened my door,
and I saw that the chute was so steep
I thought: Oh, my goodness,
how do I get these passengers to go down?
Due to the nose-down angle of the plane,
the 2 rear slides don't reach the ground
10 people are slightly injured
during the evacuation
most of them coming down the steep rear slides.
I heard on the West radar frequency,
one of the 767s says:
He is down OKAY,
He is in one piece
I said: OKAY!
because all of these people were going to sleep
in their own bed that night
There is still a lot of smoke,
coming from the plane's nose
It turned out it was about 6 inches of insulation
between the inner and outer skin...
...from friction,
that was starting to burn
The flight attendances have good news:
all 61 passengers have made it off the plane
There is not so much as a single serious injury
Bob Pearson has done what no one has done before:
he safely landed a 767 with no engines,
gliding to safety from more than 26,000 ft
The event made
international headlines immediately
People are already asking how one of the most
sophisticated passenger-planes in the world
could have run out of fuel
By the next day,
the investigations has already begun.
Bill Taylor and Diane Rocheleau
of Canada's Aviation Safety Bureau
are among the first
investigators at the scene
I was a junior mechanical engineer at the time
I've been working for transport Canada for a year
Going to the field for the first time
was very exciting
It was new,
it was a major aircraft
Once we got into
the fuel-quantity indicating system
I left Diane to deal with the specifics
of the computer system
First, Bill Taylor needs to confirm
what everyone has been telling him:
that the plane is out of fuel
Investigators drain the tanks,
collecting less than 17 gallons of fuel
The 767 can hold almost 24,000 gallons
It is like having 5 tablespoons of fuel
in a midsize car
Taylor next needs to examine the possibility
that the fuel leaked out during the flight
The other checks involved
looking for any evidence of fuel having been lost
I even went so far as to go into
what they call the dry bay of the aircraft
I'm a bit claustrophobic, so
I really wasn't too enthusiastic about
going up in there,
but I crawled up and had a
look around with the flashlight
and confirmed that there was no
evidence of fuel having been lost in there
That leaves Taylor with only one conclusion:
Flight 143 took off without enough fuel
Now, investigators need to find out why
Diane Rocheleau begins looking
for the answer to that question
in the plane's sophisticated electronics bay,
located beneath the cabin
The 767 was a newer type aircraft,
It did have a lot of computerized systems
and I guess back in 1982
These were coming on to the market at a fast rate
and they were newer types of electronic system
Rocheleau confirms that a computerized unit,
the digital fuel gauge processor,
had been malfunctioning on this plane.
There was no spare in Montreal,
so it couldn't be replaced.
Rocheleau takes the component for testing
It was decided early on
that the processing unit
will be taken to the manufacturer,
Honeywell in Indianapolis, for testing.
And I was tasked with taking the unit,
so we went through all the testing procedure
At one point we did discover
that it was a malfunction with the unit
During the testing, we went more and more in depth
and we found out that one of the circuits
It is called an inductor coil,
it was a very small part
It was encapsulated at the manufacturer
Encapsulated means it is covered with plastic
You cannot visually see it,
because it is covered with plastic
and you cannot see the coil itself
Once we took over the plastic case
we could see that the solder joint
had not been made properly
which caused the malfunction in the system
The faulty processor explains why
Pearson didn't have fuel gauges for the flight
but doesn't explain why he didn't have enough fuel
The inoperative gauges were clearly flagged
Ground crews wouldn't have relied on them
when they were fuelling the plane
Investigators confirm that the ground-crew
did perform a manual check of the fuel
before take off
I just need to know what you did next
We did a manual check of both tanks
then, we pump enough fuel for the trip
Flight 143 should have taken off
with enough fuel for the trip
Okay, thanks...
...it helps
Investigators now have to figure out
how one of the world's most advanced jetliners
took off with half the fuel,
necessary for its flight
The investigators know,
that with its fuel gauges out of service
Flight 143's fuel tanks were checked manually
Then, the fuel for the trip to Edmonton
was added to the tanks
But before the plane could be given more fuel,
a crucial calculation had to be carried out
Pilots need to know
the weight of the fuel on their plane
but fuel trucks pump jet-fuel by volume
In order for pilots and fuellers to communicate
a simple routine translation between
volume and weight has to be made
Investigators check and double-check that math.
The fuelling records from the day of the accident
provide the answers they have been looking for
This is a typical fuelling record
But when investigators examine
the calculations for Flight 143
...they look anything but straightforward
The document clearly shows the amount of fuel
in the right and left tanks
but investigators are troubled
by two particular numbers
One converts volume to kilograms
the other converts it to pounds
They shouldn't be using both
So, did you convert to pounds, or to kilograms?
To pound...
...no, to kilo
Can I see that again?
Further interviews with the technicians and crew
reveal that the events on Flight 143
were caused by human error,
involving poor calculations
and ultimately inadequate training
The technicians, refuelling Flight 143,
got muddled in their calculations
while converting the volume
coming out of the fuel truck
to the weight of the fuel in the tanks
No one who saw the calculations that day
noticed the basic error
In 1983,
Canadian ground crews were used to converting
the amount of fuel leaving their trucks,
into pounds
The 767 was the first plane in Air Canada's fleet
to have metric fuel gauges
Its fuel should have been measured not in pounds,
but in kg s, which requires a different calculation
Flight 143 needed 22,300 kg for the trip
But pilots and technicians let it leave
with 22,300 lbs instead
Because a pound is about half a kilogram,
the plane only got half the fuel it required
which explains why Pearson's flight computer
told him he had plenty of fuel
He entered the wrong amount of fuel to start with
In the past,
the flight engineer calculated the fuel loads
This accident raises an important question:
Who's job was it with the two men crew?
Better training is definitively an issue
in an incident just as that
If everyone is trained
and the lines are drawn as to
who is responsible for what
then, there is no ambiguity on it,
People know what they are responsible for
In this case, it was open ended
they were not aware who was responsible.
A subsequent enquiry found that
none of those involved that day
was trained in metric calculations
Not the ground-technicians...
...not the pilots
I had not received any...
neither of us had received any training at all,
and do these calculations
The computer that had replaced
the 767's flight engineer was broken
and no one knew who should be doing its job
Air Canada 143 was essentially down a man
The goal is to prevent a recurrence,
this particular event
We also find out other system
that might have been either at fault
or maybe they could cause
a problem in the future
and you do try to
prevent a recurrence
It took a string of mechanical and human failures
for Flight 143 to run out of fuel
but another failure that day
may have saved some lives
If the plane's nose-gear had not collapsed,
it would have taken Pearson much longer to stop
The plane could have slid into the people
who were at the strip that day.
which would have had catastrophic results
There could have been more injuries
or even loss of life
Pearson and Quintal were partly blamed
for their roles in the incident.
A government enquiry recommended that
Air Canada re-evaluate the training
of flight-crews and ground-technicians
in metric fuel conversions.
It also recommended that the airline
keep more spare parts,
such as fuel gauge processors.
Rick Dion retired in 2003 after a long career
as Air Canada's coordinator of maintenance control
First Officer Maurice Quintal
was promoted to Captain, in 1989
Captain Bob Pearson went on to fly 10 more years
for Air Canada
his experience at Gimli shaping
the rest of his career as a commercial pilot
This experience affected me mostly
by making me more relaxed as a pilot,
giving me the feeling that as much as I trained
for all those years that:
There is always that question about how
you are going to perform when the chips are down
And now, I have the feeling that no matter what
as long as the aircraft stay together,
we will get it safely back on the ground
It is a relaxing experience
It is the knowledge that you know:
under stress, you can perform
before that, you don't know
You just hope you will
and you train for it...
...but you never know
With the things that they had to deal with
was magnificent
I think that it got proven
in the simulator of Vancouver
They tried out the same circumstances
with several crews...
...and they all crashed
Probably, the most important thing that came out
of it is the realization that
when something new is introduced
special attention and training
needs to be accomplished
for people, to be aware,
what they are dealing with
When we had landed
and the air-plane was all in one piece
I thought:
Wow, I got another chance and to fly again
Because of a tragic like that,
you want to take your deck of
cards and fire it in the air
You are truly free
I guess from that point of view
I find it very difficult to say, but
Gimli was maybe almost
the best thing that ever happened to me,
next to meeting my wonderful wife
and marrying her
Two days after the landing at Gimli...
...Air Canada's 767 was back in the air
on its way to Winnipeg for repairs
A quarter century later,
that same plane is still in service
and it still carries the nickname
that Bob Pearson earned it:
The Gimli Glider
Subtitles
Rein Croonen
A catastrophic failure at 26,000 ft
Air Canada 143, go ahead
I just lost both engines
Holy cow!
I am talking to a dead man
The crew is out of options
and running out of time
They are at the controls of a 95 ton jet...
...that is quickly falling from the sky.
This is a true story
It is based on official reports
and eyewitness accounts
In placid skies over Central Canada
Air Canada Flight 143 is just passed
a halfway-mark of its journey
from Montreal to Edmonton Alberta
The plane is carrying 61 passengers
and 8 crew-members
It is July, 23th 1983
Rick Dion is an Air Canada maintenance engineer
I was going to Edmonton
with my wife Pearl
and my young son Chris, who was 4 years old
This was the beginning of a 2 week vacation for us
we were all pretty excited about
going on this new airplane.
Compliment of the Captain
This was my first flight on the modern 767
The company has just acquired them
I was interested in going to the cockpit
to see all this new technology
fit in with the work that I did on aircraft
The Captain on this flight is Bob Pearson
He is 48 years old and
he spent more than 15,000 hours in the air
His first officer is Maurice Quintal,
who has more than 7,000 hours of flying time
Come on in
Pardon me, gentlemen
I knew Bob Pearson from the small flying club
that I attended in St Lazare
He was one of the local pilots there,
that used to do some gliding
He also flew the Ultra-light Lazairs
We had departed heading North-West
a nice, clear sunny day in July
We were at a 39,000 ft
There were few airplanes
that flew that high in 1983
We requested 41,000 ft, which got us
further above the jet-stream out of the West
The crew may have accumulated
a lot of hours in the air
but very few in this plane
It is Boeing's latest and most advanced
wide-body jet: the 767
An army of microprocessors in
the belly of the plane automates so many functions
that the flight-engineer's job has been eliminated
This is one of four 767's
that Air Canada has recently acquired
The plane itself has only 150 hours on it.
Quite a difference here, huh
The cockpit is different in that all
the old instrumentation that we were accustomed to
Mostly was all gone
It was all CRT display
like small TV screens
It was a new high-tech airplane,
which involve quite a change for the crew
and maintenance personnel, people handling it
This was a new aircraft
for both the Captain and I
At that time,
I had 75 hours on that airplane
Everything was new for me
Pilots and maintenance crews
are both still getting to know this airliner
Captain Pearson explains to Dion
how he handled a small problem with
the engines on an earlier flight.
Fuel pressure
Why would that be?
A warning alerts the crew
to critically low pressure
at one of the plane's fuel pumps.
The 767 has three main fuel tanks:
two in the wings which are always used
and one in the CENTER
only used on long distance flights.
Electric fuel pumps draw fuel from each tank
and feed it to the plane's 2 engines
The low pressure warning could mean
that one of the pumps needs maintenance
but it could also be a more serious issue:
a lack of fuel to be pumped
Another low fuel pressure warning sounds
this one from another fuel pump
on the plane's left side
Pearson's Flight Management Computer
tells him he should have plenty of fuel
for the remainder of the trip
The 767 also has separate digital fuel gauges
but on this flight,
those gauges are out of service
The warnings don't make sense
I used to be involved with transferring fuel
and I know that when you're
trying to empty a tank
It will start flashing periodically,
and than the pump will re-prime
and then later go out
In this case,
it appeared to do exactly the same thing
Captain Pearson knows,
that if the left tank is running low
the right tank may be low as well
Let us head for Winnipeg...
...now!
Pearson wants to land as soon as possible
in case he is running out of fuel.
The crew is still more than 700 miles away
from their original destination, Edmonton Alberta
The nearest major airport is Winnipeg, Manitoba
a mere 120 miles away
We're showing lots of fuel on board
on our Flight Management Computer
and normal fuel checks cross checked
with our fuel on our flight-plan
We elected to divert the flight to Winnipeg,
where Air Canada has a main maintenance base
Air Canada 143
Ron Hewett has 20 year experience
as a radar controller.
Yes, sir, we have a problem
We are going to...
...a requesting direct Winnipeg
Air Canada 143 cleared
Take position direct Winnipeg
cleared to maintain 6000 descend
He didn't tell us what the problem was
and it is none of my business
Give him what he wants,
get everybody out of his way
That is about what we do
Pearson now begins to descend from 41,000 ft
The low pressure warnings are spreading
to more and more of the fuel pumps
Quintal instructs the cabin crew
to prepare for an emergency landing
I think we have problems with our fuel system
We are diverting to Winnipeg
All flight attendants to front galley please
I hope these are just false warnings
Rick, can you think of anything we haven't done?
OKAY...
... we've lost the left engine
Losing an engine erases any doubt:
Flight 143 is in fact running out of fuel
OKAY, checklist
single engine landing
Pearson is trained to land a 767 with one engine
No one has ever tried landing with none
He scrambles to get his plane down,
so that he doesn't become the first
With only one engine powering Air Canada 143,
and with the possibility of
the other engine shutting down
the crew prepares the passengers for the worst
Ladies and gentlemen,
this is your in charge flight attendance speaking
Due to mechanical problems
we will be preparing for an emergency landing
Please, return to your seats
and fasten your seatbelts
Your crew is fully trained
to deal with the situation
and as you may have noticed
some crew-members have already
started to prepare the aircraft
I had no idea, like the rest of my crew-members,
that there was a problem with fuel
I had no idea why we were going to Winnipeg
Approach and landing
Flaps will be 20
As they are doing that drill,
the right hand fuel pump low pressure light
was flashing as well
much like it did on the left
They were quite busy
carrying out the first engine out
not watching the pump-lights
which was right at my eyebrows
I knew that there was a shutdown, too
What was that?
How come I have no instruments?
Our beautiful colour engine and
flight instrument displays...
...simply went black
It is exactly what Pearson had feared.
He has lost both engines.
At 26,500
still 75 miles from the nearest major airport...
...he is out of fuel
Air Canada 143, go ahead.
We just lost both engines
When both engines shut off,
I think holy...
I am talking to a dead man
It is highly unlikely
that anybody is going to survive this
I could see them trying to make a turn
and spinning in
An airplane's engine doesn't only provide thrust
They also generate the power
needed to manipulate the plane.
It would be completely uncontrollable,
but modern airliners are like a Swiss army knife
with one last blade hidden away.
In the event of a loss of power,
they automatically deploy the RAT,
or Ram Air Turbine
It is spring-loaded
and the propeller that drives
the small hydraulic pump
is about size of a propeller
you would see like on a little Cessna 150
This arm catapults down into the slipstream
This propeller starts to turn,
drives this hydraulic pump
and gives you basic systems
It was pretty quiet, flying without motors
Pearson knows the time is running out
He needs directions to the closest landing strip
143, This is a mayday
We require a vector
on to the closest available runway
But the loss of the plane's engines
has had an unexpected consequence at ATC
They're gone
They were right here
We have lost them on the screen
I need primary radar
143, We have lost your transponder return
in our attempt to pick up your target now
We work on transponders
it is called secondary radar.
We take the pilot's signal to ping the aircraft
Commercial jetliners are equipped
with a transponder
a device that transmits coded information
which ATC use to determine the plane's location
But when Flight 143 lost its second engine
only a small number of items got back up power
The transponder was not one of them
so the plane disappeared from Hewett's screen
Flight 143 is somewhere East of Winnipeg
but no one knows exactly where,
or how far it is from the airport.
In spite of its enormous weight,
a 767 doesn't plunge from the
sky when it looses its engines
its aerodynamic properties keep it in the air,
but slowly coasting to earth
I was trying to figure
how many miles we were moving ahead
versus how many thousands of feet
we were dropping.
But Quintal doesn't have the instruments
which provide the information he needs
to make that calculation.
Since he lost the plane's signal,
Hewett cannot give Quintal that information either
Controllers hurriedly work to rig up a way
to find the plane
Just before landing, you will hear the command:
'brace for landing'
Brace immediately, and stay braced
until the plane comes to a complete stop
There are two was to brace:
1. Bend Forward:
raise your arms and ends against
Bryce Bell is a businessman
on his way home to Edmonton
As soon as they announced that we were making
a non-scheduled stop in Winnipeg
I immediately wished I hadn't had the two drinks
that I had had
because I thought: You are going
to have a split second here
and this plane is going
to explode in flame
and the decision you make in that split second
will depend on how alert you are
Because their modern equipment
cannot see Air Canada 143
the controller switched to old fashioned radar
which doesn't need a transponder to locate planes
I got to turn up my true radar
(the reflective radar)
which is not nearly as good
and we don't use that at all
OKAY, I've got it
65 from Winnipeg, 45 from Gimli
143, we have you at 65 miles from Winnipeg
and approx 45 miles from Gimli
For the first time since losing power,
the pilots know their distance to Winnipeg
We gaan gezellig naar Winnipeg
Quintal, however, thinks that Gimli is a safer bet
Gimli, Manitoba has
a decommissioned air force base
It is about 20 miles closer than Winnipeg
As luck would have it, Maurice Quintal
trained at Gimli while in the armed forces
He knows it well
45 miles to Gimli
There is long runway
Is there emergency equipment at Gimli?
Negative emergency equipment at all,
just one runway available, I believe.
No control tower and no information on it
Pearson must consider
the possibility of a crash landing
If he has any chance of making it to Winnipeg,
which has full emergency support
he knows he must try for it.
OKAY, then we would prefer Winnipeg
Fine, 143, continue your present heading
It was about regrets
Things I hadn't done in my life
It was about ways I've treated the odd person
here or there that I wish it more gently
It was about how stupid I was
at some of the things
I used to make big issues out of
that are so insignificantly
when it really comes down to
what real reality is about:
It was pretty devastating.
And I remember telling a mother with a baby
and I had...
My daughter Victoria
telling this woman that it will be okay
and I did
I was so proud of myself
that I could be so straight with her
and tell her that it was going to be alright
and really looking her in the eyes
OKAY, how far from the field are we now
You are 35 miles...
...39 miles from Winnipeg
Now that controllers can see Flight 143 on radar
they can provide Quintal
with the information he needs
to figure out if he can
glide as far as Winnipeg
1.5
About 8500 ft above the ground,
Captain Pearson can see his destination
Winnipeg's Airport is less than 35 miles away
We are visual
but the news from Quintal is not good
Bob,
Maurice was keeping track of our distance
by input from Winnipeg ATC
and out altitude
and calculated our profile
and came to the conclusion that...
...we might not make the
runway to Winnipeg
We can last maybe another 20 miles
We are not making Winnipeg
Quintal has calculated
that at the rate they are falling
they would hit the ground a full 15 miles
short of the runway
How far here from Gimli?
You are approx 12 miles from Gimli right now
Where is it?
On your right
Turn right to a heading of 345
I will say you have 10 miles to fly
OKAY, fine
We are going to go there
I am going to check up my family
You guys don't need me right now, huh?
When I went finally to sit down in my seat,
this is where I thought:
This is it
Landing gear down
First officer Quintal lowers the landing gear
Because there is no hydraulic power,
Quintal does what is known as a gravity drop
letting the gear's own weight drop and lock it
into place
The two main gear are heavy,
they fall immediately
and two green lights confirm they've locked
but the nose gear is lighter,
it doesn't lock
We could hear the main gear clearly
falling and locking
I was not aware
that the nose gear was not down and locked
It was the last minute and
if it is something that you cannot control...
...you don't talk about it,
you don't mention it
The main thing was:
bring the aircraft on the runway
5 miles to touchdown
We have the field inside
5 Miles from Gimli,
Pearson and Quintal finally
see a runway they can land on
but there is a problem
It is going to be too steep, too fast
Yeah,. I know
Pearson is almost at the runway,
but he is much too high above it
If he comes down at a normal descend rate,
he'll miss the landing-strip
but if he comes down steeply,
his plane will gather a dangerous amount of speed
he won't be able to stop
before the end of the runway
With a normal approach we have
leading edge and trailing edge flaps
which allow us to slow
the air-plane down
and fly at a slower speed, safely.
We did not have real flaps
as they run off the main hydraulic system
So, what are we going to do?
So we discuss we had two possibilities
One of them was to 360° turn
and lose the excess of altitude
On the other hand,
I thought, it would take about 3 minutes
and we were already descending
at a rate of 2500 ft/min
Only about 3000 ft
above the ground,
the plane doesn't have enough
altitude to make a full circle
It would hit the ground
before making it back to the landing strip
Pearson chooses a 2nd option
Well, I guess I 'll just slip it
Pearson decides to try a manoeuvre,
called a side slip
practically unheard of on commercial airliners,
but sometimes used by glider-pilots
and Bob Pearson has
a lot of experience flying gliders
I am just going to slip it down
till we are almost at the end of the runway
Side slipping involves
what is known as crossing the controls
Pearson plans to force the aircraft
into a sideways free-fall
allowing it to drop quickly
without increasing its forward airspeed
Pearson has never actually performed a side slip
in a commercial aircraft
but he is attempting one now
in a Boeing 767
The only way that I could control our speed
was to induce drag in the fuselage
by cross controlling
the rudder and the elevators on the tail
and the ailerons and the wingtips
and causing the aircraft into a configuration
Then, I can vary that
to increase or decrease our speed
or increase or decrease our descend rate
Pearson controls the plane's descend
by using his rudders and ailerons
to chance the angle of the plane
Crossing the controls involves
tipping the wings in one direction
but turning the aircraft in the opposite direction
putting it side ways into the oncoming air
As Flight 143 begins to drop towards the earth
Quintal is about to discover something
he did not expect
The runway he trained at 15 years ago
is no longer a runway
Captain Bob Pearson is out of fuel
out of engines, out of options
If he can't line up with the runway at Gimli,
he doesn't get a second chance
Pearson turns the yoke left
and pushes the rudders to the right
The plane slips...
...to its left
We were sitting in the CENTER,
which is the heart of the air-plane
so it is pretty solid there
I thought there is a real good chance here
that we'll be Al right
However, when he put the air-plane into a side-slip
all that went out the window was
If he hits the wing or something,
he starts to catapult and roll
that is not going to work anymore
The 767 loses altitude quickly,
ploughing sideways through the air
When I looked to the left of the aircraft,
I was looking directly on the ground
because the air-plane is angled quite,
maybe 60° of bank
The bank angle was quite high
and the nose of the aircraft was quite high
It was an awkward moment
If it was awkward for me,
I can imagine for the passengers,
it must really have felt odd
I saw a sand-trap from this golf-course
And I thought:
We are going to crash!
Pearson must maintain a crucial balance:
He has got to slow the plane enough
to be able to land safely
But if he slows down too much,
the airliner could lose his lift...
...and plummet to the ground
When a pilot is normally landing an air-plane
he is manoeuvring the flight controls
and operating the thrust levers...
...pretty continuously at most landings.
So, I was doing the same thing
(without the thrust levers)
This is where I thought at my daughter Victoria,
being alone with my husband
and how he was going to cope with our daughter
and how she was going to cope without having a mom
As they approach,
Pearson focuses on his target:
The threshold of the runway.
I got tunnel-vision like I have never had it before
It was just our speed and our relationship
with the threshold of the runway
But now, only hundreds
of feet from the ground,
Quintal sees that their troubles
are far from over
The Gimli landing strip has been converted...
...into a drag racing strip.
Today is Saturday
and it is not just a race-day.
It is a family day on the Gimli strip
Racing is done for the day,
but the airfield is filled with
members of the local sport-scar-club,
camping out with their families for the weekend.
Two children have decided
to peddle the length of the runway.
They don't hear the plane coming for them
without engines, it is silent
And one thing the 767 doesn't have...
...is a horn.
Brace, brace for landing
The nose hit with quite a bang on the runway
It was like a shotgun going off within feet
The front landing-gear gives out immediately
Pearson brakes hard, 2 tyres blow out.
The bottom of the right engine scrapes the runway.
I was a robot, no emotion at all
Finally, Pearson sees what is in their path
I looked up and could see two boys on bicycles.
They must have been probably a 1000 ft
down the runway for my position when I saw them
At one point,
I could see he raise his head
And his surprise
there is this big aircraft
I can still remember
the look of terror on their faces
So, they were close enough for me to see that.
With no nose-gear to steer with,
Pearson's only hope of driving
the plane left or right
is by varying the brake pressure
on the two main landing gear
That is where my heart
started to pitter patter a little bit
The kids panic and try to outrun a plane
that is travelling about 200 mph
I knew I couldn't take the air-plane
into these boys
and I was going to take it off
into the grass in the race-side
There were campers
along the West-side of the runway
that I didn't notice until after
we've touched down
The nose was on the ground
and I can still remember at the left side
people standing by their barbecues.
Dino Calvert is at the track with his friends
for a weekend of racing.
One of the gentlemen in the pits
suddenly jumped in his car, he took off
you don't drive like that in a pits usually
I looked up and all I could see was smoke rising
Pearson does all he can to stop the plane in time
Holy crow
The plane ploughs into a guard rail,
installed on the middle of the runway
17 minutes after running out of fuel,
Air Canada Flight 143 comes to a final stop
on the ground.
Somebody yelled: Yahoo! or something
and then people started applauding
We were so grateful, we made it!
When you believe you are going to crash,
you do believe that the air-plane
is going to break apart
You are going to have fire
EVACUATE!
Thick smoke is quickly filling the cabin
The crew doesn't take any chances:
They want everyone off the plane
as quickly as possible
There was a sense of joy
and then a panic
We've got to get out of here
Less than 2 months earlier,
an Air Canada DC-9 made a successful
emergency landing in Cincinnati
only to burst into flames on the tarmac
before all the passengers could get off:
23 people died.
The crew and passengers of this flight
want to avoid a similar faith
It took maybe just a few seconds
to come to a full hold on the runway,
but the cockpit was full of smoke
Passenger evacuation checklist
Fuel shut off
Cabin pressurized
Electrics off
Checklist complete
Time to get out of here
Come on guys, get a fire extinguisher
We grabbed a fire extinguisher on our way
You never go to a fire at a racetrack
without having a fire extinguisher with you
And we run up towards it
the doors open up and you see the chutes come of,
like a spider has growing legs
The plane ended up eventually standing almost
what appeared to be almost on its nose
When I opened my door,
and I saw that the chute was so steep
I thought: Oh, my goodness,
how do I get these passengers to go down?
Due to the nose-down angle of the plane,
the 2 rear slides don't reach the ground
10 people are slightly injured
during the evacuation
most of them coming down the steep rear slides.
I heard on the West radar frequency,
one of the 767s says:
He is down OKAY,
He is in one piece
I said: OKAY!
because all of these people were going to sleep
in their own bed that night
There is still a lot of smoke,
coming from the plane's nose
It turned out it was about 6 inches of insulation
between the inner and outer skin...
...from friction,
that was starting to burn
The flight attendances have good news:
all 61 passengers have made it off the plane
There is not so much as a single serious injury
Bob Pearson has done what no one has done before:
he safely landed a 767 with no engines,
gliding to safety from more than 26,000 ft
The event made
international headlines immediately
People are already asking how one of the most
sophisticated passenger-planes in the world
could have run out of fuel
By the next day,
the investigations has already begun.
Bill Taylor and Diane Rocheleau
of Canada's Aviation Safety Bureau
are among the first
investigators at the scene
I was a junior mechanical engineer at the time
I've been working for transport Canada for a year
Going to the field for the first time
was very exciting
It was new,
it was a major aircraft
Once we got into
the fuel-quantity indicating system
I left Diane to deal with the specifics
of the computer system
First, Bill Taylor needs to confirm
what everyone has been telling him:
that the plane is out of fuel
Investigators drain the tanks,
collecting less than 17 gallons of fuel
The 767 can hold almost 24,000 gallons
It is like having 5 tablespoons of fuel
in a midsize car
Taylor next needs to examine the possibility
that the fuel leaked out during the flight
The other checks involved
looking for any evidence of fuel having been lost
I even went so far as to go into
what they call the dry bay of the aircraft
I'm a bit claustrophobic, so
I really wasn't too enthusiastic about
going up in there,
but I crawled up and had a
look around with the flashlight
and confirmed that there was no
evidence of fuel having been lost in there
That leaves Taylor with only one conclusion:
Flight 143 took off without enough fuel
Now, investigators need to find out why
Diane Rocheleau begins looking
for the answer to that question
in the plane's sophisticated electronics bay,
located beneath the cabin
The 767 was a newer type aircraft,
It did have a lot of computerized systems
and I guess back in 1982
These were coming on to the market at a fast rate
and they were newer types of electronic system
Rocheleau confirms that a computerized unit,
the digital fuel gauge processor,
had been malfunctioning on this plane.
There was no spare in Montreal,
so it couldn't be replaced.
Rocheleau takes the component for testing
It was decided early on
that the processing unit
will be taken to the manufacturer,
Honeywell in Indianapolis, for testing.
And I was tasked with taking the unit,
so we went through all the testing procedure
At one point we did discover
that it was a malfunction with the unit
During the testing, we went more and more in depth
and we found out that one of the circuits
It is called an inductor coil,
it was a very small part
It was encapsulated at the manufacturer
Encapsulated means it is covered with plastic
You cannot visually see it,
because it is covered with plastic
and you cannot see the coil itself
Once we took over the plastic case
we could see that the solder joint
had not been made properly
which caused the malfunction in the system
The faulty processor explains why
Pearson didn't have fuel gauges for the flight
but doesn't explain why he didn't have enough fuel
The inoperative gauges were clearly flagged
Ground crews wouldn't have relied on them
when they were fuelling the plane
Investigators confirm that the ground-crew
did perform a manual check of the fuel
before take off
I just need to know what you did next
We did a manual check of both tanks
then, we pump enough fuel for the trip
Flight 143 should have taken off
with enough fuel for the trip
Okay, thanks...
...it helps
Investigators now have to figure out
how one of the world's most advanced jetliners
took off with half the fuel,
necessary for its flight
The investigators know,
that with its fuel gauges out of service
Flight 143's fuel tanks were checked manually
Then, the fuel for the trip to Edmonton
was added to the tanks
But before the plane could be given more fuel,
a crucial calculation had to be carried out
Pilots need to know
the weight of the fuel on their plane
but fuel trucks pump jet-fuel by volume
In order for pilots and fuellers to communicate
a simple routine translation between
volume and weight has to be made
Investigators check and double-check that math.
The fuelling records from the day of the accident
provide the answers they have been looking for
This is a typical fuelling record
But when investigators examine
the calculations for Flight 143
...they look anything but straightforward
The document clearly shows the amount of fuel
in the right and left tanks
but investigators are troubled
by two particular numbers
One converts volume to kilograms
the other converts it to pounds
They shouldn't be using both
So, did you convert to pounds, or to kilograms?
To pound...
...no, to kilo
Can I see that again?
Further interviews with the technicians and crew
reveal that the events on Flight 143
were caused by human error,
involving poor calculations
and ultimately inadequate training
The technicians, refuelling Flight 143,
got muddled in their calculations
while converting the volume
coming out of the fuel truck
to the weight of the fuel in the tanks
No one who saw the calculations that day
noticed the basic error
In 1983,
Canadian ground crews were used to converting
the amount of fuel leaving their trucks,
into pounds
The 767 was the first plane in Air Canada's fleet
to have metric fuel gauges
Its fuel should have been measured not in pounds,
but in kg s, which requires a different calculation
Flight 143 needed 22,300 kg for the trip
But pilots and technicians let it leave
with 22,300 lbs instead
Because a pound is about half a kilogram,
the plane only got half the fuel it required
which explains why Pearson's flight computer
told him he had plenty of fuel
He entered the wrong amount of fuel to start with
In the past,
the flight engineer calculated the fuel loads
This accident raises an important question:
Who's job was it with the two men crew?
Better training is definitively an issue
in an incident just as that
If everyone is trained
and the lines are drawn as to
who is responsible for what
then, there is no ambiguity on it,
People know what they are responsible for
In this case, it was open ended
they were not aware who was responsible.
A subsequent enquiry found that
none of those involved that day
was trained in metric calculations
Not the ground-technicians...
...not the pilots
I had not received any...
neither of us had received any training at all,
and do these calculations
The computer that had replaced
the 767's flight engineer was broken
and no one knew who should be doing its job
Air Canada 143 was essentially down a man
The goal is to prevent a recurrence,
this particular event
We also find out other system
that might have been either at fault
or maybe they could cause
a problem in the future
and you do try to
prevent a recurrence
It took a string of mechanical and human failures
for Flight 143 to run out of fuel
but another failure that day
may have saved some lives
If the plane's nose-gear had not collapsed,
it would have taken Pearson much longer to stop
The plane could have slid into the people
who were at the strip that day.
which would have had catastrophic results
There could have been more injuries
or even loss of life
Pearson and Quintal were partly blamed
for their roles in the incident.
A government enquiry recommended that
Air Canada re-evaluate the training
of flight-crews and ground-technicians
in metric fuel conversions.
It also recommended that the airline
keep more spare parts,
such as fuel gauge processors.
Rick Dion retired in 2003 after a long career
as Air Canada's coordinator of maintenance control
First Officer Maurice Quintal
was promoted to Captain, in 1989
Captain Bob Pearson went on to fly 10 more years
for Air Canada
his experience at Gimli shaping
the rest of his career as a commercial pilot
This experience affected me mostly
by making me more relaxed as a pilot,
giving me the feeling that as much as I trained
for all those years that:
There is always that question about how
you are going to perform when the chips are down
And now, I have the feeling that no matter what
as long as the aircraft stay together,
we will get it safely back on the ground
It is a relaxing experience
It is the knowledge that you know:
under stress, you can perform
before that, you don't know
You just hope you will
and you train for it...
...but you never know
With the things that they had to deal with
was magnificent
I think that it got proven
in the simulator of Vancouver
They tried out the same circumstances
with several crews...
...and they all crashed
Probably, the most important thing that came out
of it is the realization that
when something new is introduced
special attention and training
needs to be accomplished
for people, to be aware,
what they are dealing with
When we had landed
and the air-plane was all in one piece
I thought:
Wow, I got another chance and to fly again
Because of a tragic like that,
you want to take your deck of
cards and fire it in the air
You are truly free
I guess from that point of view
I find it very difficult to say, but
Gimli was maybe almost
the best thing that ever happened to me,
next to meeting my wonderful wife
and marrying her
Two days after the landing at Gimli...
...Air Canada's 767 was back in the air
on its way to Winnipeg for repairs
A quarter century later,
that same plane is still in service
and it still carries the nickname
that Bob Pearson earned it:
The Gimli Glider
Subtitles
Rein Croonen