Gimli Glider Retired

[CYWL]

I read today that the "Gimli Glider" has been retired. I hope she doesn't end up under the cutting torches.




Crews hail Gimli Glider's last flight

Canwest News Service

Friday, January 25, 2008


MONTREAL -- Air Canada employees gathered in Montreal Thursday to bid farewell to one of their more storied birds.

On its last flight, the Boeing 767 known as the infamous Gimli Glider, made a pass and waved its wings as a salute to the city that was the point of origin of a 1983 trip that wrote a page of aviation history.

It could have been an ugly page about one of the worst aviation disasters in Canadian history.

In July 23, 1983, maintenance crews for Air Canada Flight 143 discovered that a shoddy soldering job had knocked out the computer that calculates how much fuel is needed to get the plane from Montreal to Edmonton, with a brief stopover in Ottawa.

Instead of cancelling the flight, the ground crews decided to do the calculations manually, even if none of them had been trained to do this.

The aircraft arrived safely in Ottawa and it was not until a warning signal began beeping at 41,000 feet over Red Lake, Ont., that the flight crew realized the mistake -- imperial measurements had been used in the calculations rather than metric. The plane had run out of fuel and both engines soon stopped.

Captain Robert Pearson, a trained glider pilot, had his first officer begin calculating for the optimum gliding speed for the jumbo jet. Unable to make Winnipeg, First Officer Maurice Quintal suggested taking the plane down at a nearby air force base in Gimli, Man. Unbeknownst to the first officer, however, was that one of the airstrips -- where the plane would eventually land -- had become a drag-racing strip. The plane's nose gear eventually came to a stop just 30 metres from where crowds of campers had collected after its front landing gear collapsed on landing.

The jet sustained only minor damage.

[lilfssister]

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