The Gimli Glider - A Plane That Ran Out Of Fuel At An Altitude Of 41,000 Feet

Every day thousands of airplanes fly to their respective destinations worldwide and this number of flights is increasing day by day as reports suggest that traveling in airplanes is the safest mode of transportation. But despite being the safest, these planes sometimes become victims of major accidents. Today we are going to tell you about such a shocking plane accident that no one had ever imagined and the scene after the accident was nothing short of a miracle.

Accident

On July 22, 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 flew from Toronto to Edmonton and then Edmonton to Montreal. Now, this flight was to return to Edmonton from Montreal with a stopover in Ottawa. Now the pilots had to change their shift at this Montreal airport. The flight was now commanded by Captain Bob Pearson and Maurice Quintal, both of whom were highly experienced pilots. This was the period when countries like Canada and Britain were in the initial stage of replacing the imperial units measurement system into the SI units measurement system. Due to a malfunction in the plane's Fuel quantity indicator system, crew members had to manually calculate the fuel requirement in the plane. But the mistake here was that due to the use of the incorrect conversion factor, the crew members filled 22300 pounds (10,100 kilograms) of fuel in the plane instead of 22300 kilograms fuel which was less than half that amount. Shortly after the plane took off, at an altitude of about some feet, the pilot saw a signal on his controls that one of the engines in the plane had been completely shut down. Soon after going some more feet higher the second engine of the plane also stopped working and with this, the plane also lost its electrical power and almost all the instrument displays in the cockpit went blank.

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With both the engines stopped working, the system went dead leaving only a few basic battery-powered emergency flight devices instruments. On the other hand, the information for the pilots in the cockpit had also stopped coming and when the captain tried to understand the reason for this malfunction, it was found that at the altitude of 41000 feet, the fuel of the plane was completely used up. Both pilots were completely shocked and disturbed seeing this happen. Captain Pearson decided to make an emergency landing at a nearby runway. Both pilots kept secret about the failure of both the engines from the rest of the plane's crew members and passengers and only gave them the message that the plane is being made an emergency landing. The Winnipeg airbase was chosen for an emergency landing, but after a little calculation, the pilots found that the plane could not be glide to the Winnipeg airbase at the current speed of the plane. Shortly afterward First Officer Maurice Quintal remembered the airbase Gimli of his training days and asked Captain Pearson to land on the Gimli airbase. But both of them did not know that Gimli airbase now had been turned into a motor racing track, where a Winnipeg Sports Car Club racing was underway at that time. Landing a passenger flight on a racing track between so many people and cars was a very dangerous decision, but both pilots had no other option.


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Without the main power thereafter, the pilots used a gravity drop, which allows gravity to lower the landing gear and lock it in place. The main gear locked in position, but the nose wheel did not. It seemed as if all kinds of bad luck surrounded that flight that day. At the same time, the hydraulic steering system of the plane also failed, without which the aircraft cannot be controlled. Because all the lights of the plane were off, so the people on the track did not even know that a heavy airplane was coming towards them at a very high speed. Approaching the track, the pilots luckily found an empty spot on the track where there was neither a car nor any human at that time. The pilots decided to land the plane on that empty spot and the plane was brought in line with that part of the track. As soon as the touchdown occurred, the pilot braked hard, skidding and promptly blowing out two of the aircraft's tires due to which the unlocked nose wheel collapsed and was forced back into its well, causing the aircraft's nose to slam into, bounce off, and then scrape along the ground, which helped in stopping the plane quickly. Now the pilot applied an additional right brake, which caused the main landing gear to break and put the aircraft to a complete halt after rubbing on the ground moving a bit. 

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But if both landing gears of the plane were not broken, it would have been almost impossible to stop at the right time by controlling the plane speed and keeping a distance from the people, and in such a situation, many people would have lost their lives. But the journey of this flight ended in a very miraculous way in which no passengers and crew members lost their lives and only a few passengers suffered minor injuries.

In the world of aviation, even today, this event is considered a miracle and both pilots have been given special respect for their outstanding Airmanship and unprecedented courage for handling the situation in such severe conditions. This unusual aviation incident gave the aircraft the nickname "Gimli Glider".