On July 23, 1983 a Canada Air 767 with 61 passengers and eight crew aboard ran out of fuel while flying over a remote area of Ontario, Canada at 41,000ft. The pilot and co-pilot were able to take the airplane and glide it to a harrowing but safe landing on a drag strip in Gimli, Manitoba, Canada.
The outcome was less a miracle and more an amazing example of expert pilot work from Captain Robert Pearson and co-pilot Maurice Quintal. But how did this happen? How did a modern airliner run out of gas halfway through a flight? How did this impossible scenario come to pass?A series of coincidental mistakes culminating with some bad math set the wheels in motion to produce the scenario that was and will forever be known as The Gimli Glider.
This is the story about how some small breaks in communication, a mis-calculated math problem, and dauntless skill all combined to create one of the most fascinating stories in the history of modern aviation. Think running out of gas in your car is annoying? Try it miles in the sky while trying to get hundreds of thousands of pounds safely to the ground!
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jet engine factory in the early 90’s; german airline(run by bean counters) sent back the hot section for warranty. this was a million dollar part. mutli stages of blades and vanes. rebuild time was 10,000 cycles. sent back with 20,000 cycles. every blade and vane was worn down to half size. that’s a lot of clearance/combustion taken away. thankfully jet engines are way overdesigned. maintenance decisions were done by bean counters back then. REAL SCARY.
i love flying, but after seeing that i don’t fly anymore. btw, they did warranty the part.
In August 2001, Air Transat Flight 236 was over the Atlantic heading from Toronto to Lisbon when it ran out of fuel due to a leak caused by a wrong fuel line installed. Fortunately the pilot of the Airbus A330 had experience as a glider pilot and was able to glide 130 miles to an abandoned airstrip on a small island.