The Incredible story of The Gimli Glider — the Flight That Flew Without Fuel
And without both of its engines
“Holy shit.”
The indicator panel in the airliner lit up like a Christmas tree decorated with bad news. Inside the cockpit of the cruising airliner, Captain Bob Pearson was understandably alarmed at the huge number of beeps that were coming out from his flight computer.
The flight had run out of fuel and had just lost both of its engines at 41,000 feet. Most of their instruments started to fail. Deep inside, the pilots knew that there was a very slim chance they would survive this. If they did, they needed to do something that was never done before.
Will they be able to save themselves? And the 61 passengers that were on board?
The Take Off
On July 23rd, 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 was scheduled to take off from Montreal, Québec towards Edmonton, Alberta by way of Ottawa. The flight was a five-month-old Boeing 767–200 C-GAUN with new state-of-the-art technologies. Onboard were 61 passengers and eight crew.
