The "Gimli Glider" 767 Retires Peacefully, at Last

The "Gimli Glider" in 1983, shortly after her famous glide.

After surviving a harrowing near-disaster in 1983, the Boeing 767  known as the "Gimli Glider" was retired to the desert boneyards of southern California today.  The aircraft, registered as C-GAUN, acquired its nickname after a fuel calculation error caused the plane to depart for its infamous flight with an insufficient supply of fuel on board.  As a result, the plane ran out of gas 28,000 feet over Ottowa and lost power. With the engines completely shut down, it came in for an emergency landing at Gimli, an abandoned military airport in central Manitoba which was at the time playing host to an amateur go-kart race. There were no major injuries among the passengers or the folks on the ground, thanks in no small part to the fact that Robert Pearson, the captain of of the stricken 767, had prior experience flying gliders, and he applied some of those techniques from the cockpit of the 767.  An article in today's Toronto Globe and Mail recalls the harrowing tale:

The tale of the Gimli Glider has circled the globe, boosted by a 1989 book titled "Freefall: A True Story", which details the flight that departed from Montréal, made a scheduled stopover in Ottawa, and landed in Gimli, instead of its intended destination of Edmonton. After being published in English, the book was translated into six other languages: French, German, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, and Japanese versions spawned worldwide interest in the jet. Mr. Pearson has a copy of all seven versions on the book.

Air Canada Flight 143 only had half the fuel that the pilots thought it carried, due to a metric conversion error on the ground that went undetected in both Montréal and Ottawa.

"Wrong information was given by the refuelling company to the mechanics," said Mr. Pearson, who was originally threatened with a six-month demotion for allegedly not taking enough care. But he doesn't hold any grudges, relieved at the safe landing and escaping disciplinary action.

Mr. Pearson had gliding experience from 1964 to 1970, so he recalls that instead of panicking as the Boeing 767 cruised at high altitude, his mind switched to directing the plane as best he could.

"It was like I was a robot, devoid of emotion. I was just focused on getting the bloody thing down accurately," [Peterson] said.

The Wikipedia picks up the rest of the tale:

[First officer Maurice] Quintal selected his former RCAF base at Gimli as the landing spot. Unbeknownst to Quintal, since his time in the service, RCAF Station Gimli had become a public airport, and had decommissioned one of its parallel runways, which was then being used for sports car racing. Furthermore, on this particular day the area was covered with cars and campers for "Family Day", and a race was being run on the former runway.

As they approached Gimli, the pilots attempted a power-off gravity drop of the main landing gear, but the nose wheel failed to lock down due to a hydraulic lock (the nose wheels are blown back by the airflow). The ever-reducing speed of the aircraft also reduced the effectiveness of the ram air turbine, and the aircraft became increasingly difficult to control. As they grew nearer it became apparent that they were too high, and Pearson executed a maneuver known as a forward slip to increase their drag and reduce their altitude. As Pearson executed the slip, the aircraft was flying over a golf course, and one passenger reportedly said, "Christ. I can almost see what clubs they're using". A slip is commonly used with gliders and light aircraft, either to lose height quickly or to execute a cross-wind landing. As soon as the wheels touched the runway, Pearson "stood on the brakes", blowing out several of the aircraft's tires. The unlocked nose wheel collapsed and was forced back into the housing causing the nose section to scrape along the ground. The aircraft came to rest only a few hundred feet from the crowd of families gathered at the end of the runway.

The stricken 767 was temporarily repaired and (yes) refueled at Gimli, and flown out two days later.  It then went on to have an otherwise-normal career, until it was finally retired from revenue service earlier this month. Pearson, meanwhile, flew the aircraft another 30 times, before he retired from the airline in 1993.  It's unclear what will happen to the famous 767 now, although the Globe and Mail reports that the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa is interested in acquiring it.

The final flight of the Gimli Glider, 24 January, 2007
(Photo: Frederic Kogut/jetphoto.net)

And the moral of the story?

Think Metric!

Comments

[ian]

Gimli is an hour drive north of where I live!!

The middle of nowhere, mentioned on your blog!

I am actually amazed that that plane is still flying, it seems so long ago.

Last week I flew NWA to San Fran for Macworld, and comparatively speaking Air Canada kicks NWA in up keep. The seat back entertainment systems Air Canada is rolling out is state of the art, touch screen, customized playlists, movies on demand. Very cool.
Now if they could just get all the bitter 50 yer old attendants to retire, they might be viewed in this country with less hate.

[blalor]

I flew gliders about 10 years ago (eek!), now, and I remember the SSA magazine, "Soaring", having an article about this. I always loved the story, especially how the pilot flew a 90 ton airliner just like a half-ton sailplane. You've got some great stuff here, as always!

[chromal]

Although I can sympathize, having almost run out of gas in my car on more than one occasion, it's pretty mind-boggling that both the pilot and copilot failed to notice the fuel gauges. Sure, someone on the ground screwed up, but the responsibility lies with the captain, who screwed up more critically by failing to notice something so basic!

[griff]

Most likely flight crew would have noticed the fuel gauges as part of the pre-flight check had the gauges been working. They were inactive due to a faulting solder connection. The problem was that the measuring stick used by the fuel crew was in centimeters and the numbers they were told to use were in inches.

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this is so scary to even thing about it. Where does somebodies brain goes.

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the people we hire sometimes is not good. this is so very scary.

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Thats a nice plane.