Warringah Radio Control
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(Incorporated under the Association Incorporation Act 1984)

 The Gimli Glider
Deadstick!! - The story of the "Gimli Glider"
It happens often at the field, for any variety of reasons. You are at the Pilots' Area and you hear the call (or more frightening when you have to call) ... "DEADSTICK!!" Imagine this in real life with fully laden commercial aircraft! As you can imagine, if instead of your model you have a Boeing 767 running out of fuel at 41,000 feet you have a 132 ton glider that sinks at over 2000 feet per minute and has barely enough hydraulic pressure to control the ailerons, elevator and rudder.
That's exactly what happened on July 23rd, 1983 when Air Canada Aircraft #604, Flight 143 ran out of fuel and pilots Bob Pearson and Maurice Quintal landed the aircraft safely in an incident known ever since as "The Gimli Glider".
The flight's  problems began on the ground in Montreal when a computer known as the "Fuel Quantity Information System Processor" or "FQIS" was not working properly which left the aircraft without working fuel gauges. The FQIS manages the fuel loading process for the 767 controlling all of the fuel pumps and the fuel gauges.
To make their flight from Montreal to Ottawa, and on to Edmonton, Flight 143's maintenance crew resorted to calculating the 767's fuel load using a procedure known as dripping the tanks and the resulting calculation input into the fuel management computer on board.
The flight crew had never been trained how to perform the drip calculations and to be absolutely, positively safe they re-ran the numbers three times to be sure the refuelers hadn't made any mistakes each time using 1.77 pounds/liter as the specific gravity factor. This factor was written on the refueler's slip and was used on all of the other planes in Air Canada's fleet.
What was unknown to the inadequately trained crew and the refuellers was that the factor that should have been used on the brand new all-metric 767 was .8 kg/liter of kerosene.
After landing in Ottawa, to be completely safe, Pearson insisted on having the 767 re-dripped to be certain they had got it right. The refuellers in Ottawa reported that the plane had 11,430 liters of fuel contained in the two wing tanks and Pearson and Quintal, again using the same incorrect factor used in Montreal, calculated they had 20,400 kilos of fuel on board.
Lacking any other fuel gauges Quintal and Pearson manually keyed 20,400 into the 767's flight management computer which kept a track of the amount of fuel remaining by subtracting the amount of fuel burned from the amount the crew believed they had started with. As a consequence because of the fatal error in their calculations they left Ottawa with much less fuel than would be needed to reach Edmonton.
As the crew and passengers had just finished dinner the first warning light came on when they were outbound over Red Lake Ontario at 41,000 feet and travelling at 469 knots. The 767's "Engine Indicator and Crew Alerting System" (EICAS) beeped four times in quick succession, alerting the crew to a fuel pressure problem. Pearson later said: "At that point we believed we had a failed fuel pump in the left wing, and switched it off. We also considered the possibility we were having some kind of a computer problem. Our flight management computer showed more than adequate fuel remaining for the duration of the flight. We'd made fuel checks at two waypoints and had no other indications of a fuel shortage."
Then a second fuel pressure warning light came on and the experienced pilot that he was, Pearson felt it was too much of a coincidence. He immediately made a decision to divert to Winnipeg and requested an emergency clearance and began a gradual descent to 28,000.
After that things began to happen quickly. The other left wing pressure gauge lit up, and the 767's left engine quickly flamed out. The crew next tried crossfeeding the tanks and Pearson and Quintal immediately began making preparations for a one engine landing.
Suddenly another fuel light lit up but two minutes later the EICAS issued a sharp "bong" indicating the complete and total loss of both engines. Quintal later remarked: "It's a sound that Bob and I had never heard before. It's not in the simulator."
After the "bong" things got real quiet. Out of fuel, both Pratt & Whitney engines had flamed out. Pearson's response as recorded on the cockpit voice recorder was "Oh F___!"
The 767 has a sink rate in excess of 2,000 ft per minute and without the engines going suffers a severe shortage of electric power to operate the instruments in the "Glass Cockpit". The APU (auxiliary power unit) uses the same fuel as the main engines, so there is nothing to generate hydraulic power either, and the controls were starting to get stiff and inoperable.
Approaching 28,000 feet the 767's "Glass Cockpit" went dark. Pilot Bob Pearson was left with a radio and standby instruments, noticeably lacking a vertical speed indicator - the glider pilot's instrument of choice.
Luckily Boeing had installed a RAT (Ram Air Turbine) in the equipment for the 767. This is essentially a wind generator that drops automatically into the airflow under the plane to generate a minimal amount of hydraulic power.
Now the crew started to look for somewhere near enough and long enough to put the 767 down in one piece, with the huge drag from the windmilling fan blades and nothing in the manuals anticipating the loss of both engines, they were making it up as they went along.
Their preferred diversion, Winnipeg was beyond them and only Gimli, the site of an abandoned Royal Canadian Air Force Base and situated about 80 kilometers North of Winnipeg, remained as a possible landing spot but was about 20 kilometers away. Quintal was familiar with Gimli because he'd been stationed there in the service.
What was unknown to the crew and the controllers in Winnipeg was that Runway 32L (left) of Gimli's twin 6800 foot runways had become inactive and was now used for auto racing. A steel guard rail had been installed down the length of the southeastern portion of 32L, dividing it into a two lane dragstrip.
In fact on that fateful day the Winnipeg Sports Car Club was conducting "Family Day" and the inactive runways had been "carved up" into a variety of racing courses. Go-cart races were being held on one portion of runway 32L and the dragstrip portion of the runway served as the final straightaway for a road course. Around the edges of the straightaway were lots of cars, campers, kids, and families.
Pearson and Co-pilot Quintal turned toward Gimli and continued their steep glide. As Flight 143 disappeared below Winnipeg's radar screens the controllers frantically radioed for information.
On the Gimli approach Pearson and Quintal next discovered that the RAT didn't supply hydraulic power to the 767's landing gear, flaps, or slats. There was nothing in the Quick Reference Handbook so Pearson ordered a "gravity drop" and Quintal released the gear door pins. They heard the main gear fall and lock in place, but Quintal only got two green lights instead of three. The nose gear hadn't gone over center.
Ten Kilometers out Pearson began his final approach onto what was formerly RCAFB Gimli. Approaching runway 32L Pearson realized that he was too high and too fast, and slowed to 180 knots. Without divebrakes, Pearson did what any sailplane pilot would do, he crossed the controls and threw the 767 into a sideslip which is normally avoided on commercial flights because of the discomfort to passengers as it tends to scare and unnerve them.
As he put the plane into a slip some of Flight 143's passengers ended up looking at nothing but blue sky, the others straight down at a golf course. The next problem was that the slip further slowed the RAT, which lost hydraulic pressure and as the RAT didn't supply power to the 767's flaps or slats the landing was expected to be "hot".
Pearson held the slip until the very last moment realising that the 767 had but one chance at a landing, and aware of the tragedy that could happen if the crew got it wrong.
Pearson had selected 32L instead of 32R because Gimli was uncontrolled and he had to rely on visual cues. It was near dusk and 32L was a bit wider having been the primary runway at Gimli in prior years. Light stanchions still led up to 32L and the "X" painted on 32L indicating its inactive status had become quite faded or non-existent.
The 767 silently levelled off and the main gear touched down as spectators, racers, and even kids on bicycles fled the runway as the 132 ton Boeing 767 was about to rip up the tarmac. Pearson braked as hard as he could the instant the main gear touched down. An explosion rocked through the 767's cabin as two tires blew out and the nose gear collapsed. The nose of the 767 slammed against the tarmac, bounced, and then began throwing a shower of sparks and the right engine nacelle struck the ground.
The 767 came to a stop on its nose, mains, and right engine nacelle a hundred feet from spectators, barbecues and campers. The fuselage was intact and inside the passengers were jubilant, they'd made it; they were all still alive.
The only injuries that resulted from Pearson's dead-stick landing came from passengers coming down the rear emergency slide too fast and hitting the asphalt, none of the injuries were life-threatening. All of the race fans had managed to flee the path of the 767. Pearson had touched down 800 feet from the threshold and used a mere 3000 feet of runway to stop.
The 767 was relatively unscathed and Air Canada Aircraft #604 was repaired sufficiently to be flown out of Gimli two days later. After approximately $1M in repairs consisting primarily of skin repairs and replacement of a wiring harness it re-entered the Air Canada fleet, but Aircraft #604 continued to be known to insiders as "The Gimli Glider".
As a humorous aside, Air Canada sent a group of mechanics to begin effecting repair and retrieve #604 from Gimli. As they were driving to the scene in a van with their tools it ran out of fuel en-route and they became stranded somewhere in the backwoods of Manitoba

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