The 1983 "Gimli Glider" Incident. 

I was there that day, the boys on the bikes came looking for us, “a plane has crashed”, there had been zero noise and we expected it to be a small private plane, total shock to see a wide body jet sitting there. We spent time administering first aid to the passengers who had road rash after hitting the tarmac from the escape chutes. Our trophies for the 1983 road racing season were ceramic plaques with the plane’s image on them.

I remember when this happened. There was an editorial cartoon out shortly after this happened. Ground crewman on top of the wing asking his buddy 'how many feet in a litre?'.

One of my friends was living and working in Manitoba at the time of the incident. At the time he was into drag racing and he was actually at the old RCAF landing strip at the time the incident, he was one of the people who helped extinguish the minor fire that started from the plane landing with the nose wheel not deployed correctly. To prove that the world is a small place a number of years ago I met the pilot of the "Gimli Glider", Bob Pearson. I talked to Mr Pearson for some time about the whole incident and he was quite friendly and informative. I remember him saying that people have called him a hero for saving the plane and all the passengers, but he stated that he was also saving himself!

I remember reading about this when it happened and you missed one small but important point. The spectators at the race had their backs to the aircrafts approach, and since it was coming in silently, didn't realize the danger. Of the two boys with bicycles you mentioned, who saw the plane coming in, one DID realize the danger and began pedaling down the runway as fast as he could, screaming out warnings as he went. He was credited with clearing the spectators from the area where the plane finally came to a stop. Who knows how many might have died if it hadn't been for his quick thinking. He should be remembered as well.

When the plane was retired and flown down south, the Americian Military ATC allowed the plane to buzz the tower before landing. A very rare thing.

I’ve been an official with the Winnipeg Sports Car Club for about 20 years. While I was not there for this, I know people who were there. One of the two kids that were riding their bikes that day (and had to get out of the way) had an interesting story to tell many years later. A while back (10-15 years?) he was travelling on a highway just north of Winnipeg. This highway travels by a small, but busy airport that did a lot of flight training. As he drove along, a small plane on a training flight had problems, and landed on the highway behind him. He had to go into the ditch to get out of the way. 🙂

I remember learning forward slips to land while too high on final. My instructor told me about this. My man slipped a 767 and saved every person. The flight crew are heroes.

Read this story a while ago, and aside from everything that went wrong, there was just enough bits of good luck that aligned in their favour to bring it to a safe conclusion.

Gimli, Manitoba, was named by settlers who came from Iceland. J. R. R. Tolkien took the Dwarves' names from the _Dvergatal_ section of the _Völuspá,_ one of the poems in the _Poetic Edda,_ which originated in Iceland. 😺

Another Glider flight... The Azores Glider. Air Transat Flight 236 took off from Toronto, Canada, bound for Lisbon, Portugal, on August 24, 2001. A fractured fuel line left the plane with no fuel and both engines flamed out over the Atlantic. Pilot Robert Piché, brought the plane in for a hard landing at Lajes Airport on Terceira Island, Azores. This turned out to be the longest unpowered glide of a passenger airliner in history. Everyone survived.

My grandparents had vacation property in Gimli (my grandfather had trained pilots there during the War) and Bob Pearson had a farm near my childhood home (North Glengarry, Ontario).

The Gimli Glider "incident" is mandatory content in any aviation failure analysis for SO many reasons. That photo of drivers in their race cars with a 767, nose down, looming over them is epic. And to imagine that that plane flew for another 25yrs speaks so much. I can only imagine Pearson's call to "the company" afterwards, "Yeah, we came up short of Edmonton, but we're all good boys. I need 1/2 a dozen GreyHounds and the same mechanics, stat. I'll stay where I'm from, you come where I'm to.

As an aircraft maintenance instructor of over 30 years, I have used this occurrence as an example of improper use of an MEL and knowledge of the systems maintenance staff work on. Thanks for keeping the story alive. It has several great lessons for staff and management.

I believe Air Canada's best pilots tried that landing in the Sim and crashed everytime. The airmanship displayed that day was superb!

My first time out drag racing at Gimli a few years ago, I parked my car beside another racer who was one of the kids on the bikes during the landing. It's a small strange world.

I amazed nobody was killed or seriously hurt... truly incredible! The survival of the people aboard the Air Canada flight is a testimony to the skill of the aircrew.

I was living there and my father was the rcmp in charge. He was first on scene as he was driving by airport when call came in plane was crashing. He watched it land. What a day!

In 1970, I had a similar experience piloting a YO-3 recon aircraft (truly the first stealth military aircraft) over North Vietnam. I had just reached altitude of 3000 feet, when the aircraft started to shake like a pop corn machine. The tachometer would red line and then zero.I reduced both power and manifold pressure and the extreme vibration stopped, but no thrust. I slowly increased power and the vibrations became so extreme,I thought the canopy was going to blow off. I had a brief chat with the SO in the front seat informing him we might have to bailout. I feathered the prop, activated my emergency transponder and signaled MAYDAY. I was just about to jettison the canopy (at night over NV) when I took a glanced at my instruments. The O-3 was maintaining altitude but with low ground speed. I was gliding. The O-3 was built on a glider frame but could I limp back to base flying over the DMZ ? For 35 minutes I dived and soared finally arriving. I signaled a dead stick landing. SNAFU! An O-2 taxied in the runup area. I signaled a third time and a green light appeared at the tower. I lowered my under-carriage and was making a good approach when the 0-2 taxied where I had intended to touchdown. I prepared myself for a crashing landing on the muddy grounds to the right. At the very last second, the O-2 started his takeoff roll. I was so close on his tail, I CLOUD SEE HIS AVIONICs panel all lit up. That is not the end. I had read about wind shears, but never encounter one, I anticipated making a three point landing but when I flared out, the 0-3 porpoise Back into the air. This happened two more times. Finally, running out of runway, I lowered the flaps to 30 degrees and turned the master switch off. Touch down, but I had to press the brakes hard resulting in a skid into the soft mud, finally stopping. There was a firetruck and a meatwagión right behind the aircraft. The first thing I said "I need a GD drink". One medic had a flask of Old Crow. The best swig I have ever had! Verdict? Contaminated AVGAS. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_YO-3_Quiet_Star

I used to use this as a chemistry teacher to illustrate the importance of paying attention to units (gallons/liters or pounds/kilograms) while doing any conversion. If the units don’t cancel out correctly…..something is definitely wrong! This could have been easily avoided, in hindsight.

Being from Winnipeg, I've heard this story countless times. Yet, I never get tired of hearing it. It's just incredible airmanship.

Incredible story of coming through in a pinch after something that should have never happened.

A great account of a legendary event. As an avid amateur historian of aviation literature and a glider pilot myself I offer one minor correction only because it illustrates the amazing, curious, and sometimes counterintuitive abilities of sport gliders and sailplanes. They in fact do not “tend to be as light as possible”. Many gliders and virtually all cross country racing gliders contain water tanks in the wings so that they can be made as heavy as possible, hundreds of pounds more than with just the pilot aboard. This is to increase their gliding speed as they are coasting down between the powerful upcurrents used to gain altitude (without an engine). Strangely, the decrease in climbing performance of a heavier glider is more than offset by its increased glide speed between climbs, at least when the upcurrents are strong. When rising atmospheric currents are weak the water can be dumped from the tanks in flight and is almost always dumped prior to landing. On a day with strong air currents a heavier glider will go faster and thus farther on a given day and encounter more rising air currents than an otherwise identical but lighter glider. In optimal conditions a modern racing glider can fly hundreds of kilometers at an average speed FASTER than a four seat 200 hp airplane!

As with all incidents I've come across in my 30+ years in aviation it's rarely just a single item that causes a mishap or accident. Multiple things go wrong or are overlooked that snowball into a catastrophe. Another quality video on your part! One small thing, the FQI is called the Fuel QUANTITY Indicator. Cheers!

As someone who grew up listening to Paul Harvey, can I just say I love your presentation style!

The Gimli Glider story has long been famous amongst us aviators... it is nice to know the rest of the story... and you did an excellent job of telling it to us. Thank you very much!!

I've always been amazed by the knife's edge this incident rests on. One tiny thing out of place and you either have an uneventful flight or an unforgettable disaster

I thought I knew this whole story, but in fact I had no idea about the hilariously complex comedy of errors that led to the insufficient fuel. Thank you for detailing all the facts.

I've seen the number of specials on the Gimli Glider but I knew the history guy would come through with something I didn't already know. He did. The maintenance crew running out of gas. Classic. Well done. Mr history guy

Well you have most of the story correct. I was working at AC at the time and an old mechanic (Bill) told us the next morning exactly what had happened. It took many months for AC to admit what happened. Bill told us the pilots had the correct number (in weight) except they had pounds instead of KG, which is why they got about half way from Ottawa to Edmonton. This aircraft was purchased by PWA (one of two 767's with metric systems). The airline was in financial trouble, and sold these two aircraft to AC, who had bought 30 767's in Imperial systems. AC's lack of awareness, lack of training etc that came out later was the flaw that allowed this to happen. The pilots were confused by the strangely worded error message about a fuel pump. Bill's friend was on the plane and in the cockpit. He was looking up the error message in a manual when several other fuel pump failure messages came up. The pilot said, "never mind, I know what it is"... there was no fuel to pump. With that the engines shut down and 35 miles from WPG airport was too far. Gimli was nearby and the rest was a very great relief that no one was hurt. The plane flew for another 30 years. AC finally admitted that the pilots were not to blame, and reinstated them (with an award). And after that, the Gimli Glider became history!

Reminds me of a story I read when I was a kid in the Civil Air Patrol and we were taking Flight Training. "The plane that crashed before takeoff" . It was about the importance of all your PreFlight checks, especially mass calculations and the effects of temperature and humidity on air density.

Mentour Pilot has an excellent and thorough analysis of this event from the point of view of an experienced commercial pilot.

A pilot's definition of impeccable might be different from the common understanding. My WWII pilot of a grandfather wrote in his memories: a good landing is one you can walk away from on your own legs, a perfect landing is one where the aircraft can be reused.

Had the pilot not been an experienced glider pilot, this might have been a tragedy. Good on you mate!!

Loss of all engines has happened - more frequently than you might suspect though the reasons might differ (volcanic ash, ice ingestion, oil leaks, fuel leaks) - Air Transat Flight 236 in 2001 out of fuel over the Atlantic - the Azores Glider with the longest passenger aircraft glide and also an experienced glider pilot as PIC.

I am very familiar with this incident but never knew all the details of why things went so wrong. Leave it to The History Guy to fill all the gaps!

I remember reading a book about this incident. Fascinating story. Thanks to the History Guy I learned today about the repair crew getting lost and running out of gas. LOL. Talk about an error laden flight and, thankfully, a remarkable flight crew.

I remember a movie called 'Freefall: Flight 143' depicting this incident...the RAT (Retractable Air Turbine) saved the day, along with the skill of the flight crew!

You didn't quite cover the runway situation in its entirety. 2006 I was applying for my first job out of flight school (skydiver driver), I was up with the chief pilot in my first circuit with him, we took off north bound and when I came around to line up for the runway, (even knowing the story!), I naturally lined up with the most inviting one. Canadian cold war basses were parallel runways so interceptors could launch with their wingman already in formation, and the runway still in service is perfect for any aircraft outside the A380, however it is just a grey asphalt runway with only light traffic: the race track looks more inviting with all the fresh rubber laid down, it just looks like what a pilot expects to see! My chief pilot, looked at me and asked me where I was going, and there was a couple seconds until I had my "oh s#!t" moment: he made me promise to never do it again, and I never did! But without someone there to warn you, in an engine out situation, you can't see the barriers until your far too close to do anything about it!

*Pilots land plane without engines, saving many lives onboard* ATC: 'Still only counts as one!'

I used to live on that base, when it WAS a base. A guy I worked with, belonged to that sports car club, and was there that day.

The old saw is any landing you walk away from is a good one. Considering everything, this landing was exceptional.

I'm a glider pilot, and this is perhaps my favorite glider story. I learned quite a bit more about the event, and the way you tell these stories is quite engaging. Thanks so much!

Interesting that Capt. Pearson and Capt. Sullivan were both experienced glider pilots.

Gloin is a dwarf in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, his son Gimli is a dwarf in JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, it's fantasy that deserves to be remembered.

I remember when this happened. The same year we lost an incredible singer Stan Rogers to an on-board fire. I remember how angry people were about the conversation of Canada to the metric system. One great benefit of the metric system and the pocket calculator is that now most people are completely incapable of calculating sums in their head.

My flight instructor would say "altitude is money in the bank". One of your best Lance! ✈ "Keep em flying!!"

I really enjoy your aviation related episodes, probably because I was an Airline Pilot for 25 years. I once had to land a Boeing 777 on one engine in Cold Bay, Alaska in 2004. That was easy compared to what the guys in this episode did.

A chopper pilot always told me everything is ok until the fan stops.

Pounds-per-liter is an AMAZINGLY cursed unit of measurement.

Had a neighbor when I was a kid who'd done RAF training in Canada for service in WWII. On the trip back after training the ship was sunk by a U-Boat, and the frostbite to his toes disqualified him from flying. He ended up as an absurdly influential Bell Labs guy. We owe modems and laser mice at least in part to him. He took me up in his glider once. We spun around in thermals for what felt like hours,

there's another similar incident, even more dramatic since it happened over the ocean, involving the pilot Robert Piché, best known for performing a deadstick landing of an Airbus A330 (C-GITS) in the Azores in 2001. He glided the Airbus A330 longer than any commercial aircraft in history, and landed at an airport on a remote island with limited navigation instruments. He was able to successfully land the plane (with only 8 blown tires) with only a few injuries among the crew and 306 passengers.[2][4] In a response to a reporter's question regarding heroism, Mr. Piché stated "I don't consider myself a hero, sir. I could have done without this."

I never leave comments, but would like you to know that I absolutely enjoy this channel and your story telling. Thank you!!

There's another great piece to this story: several years later, Pierson and Quintel bumped into each other at an airport and discovered they were scheduled to work their next flight together. They got on board the plane and quickly realized that they were back on board the Gimli Glider, then asked for the fuel system to be checked one more time before departure.

The F-4E Phantoms I worked with had the glide ration of a brick...Every major accident I've ever seen was the result of a series of incidents, rarely just one thing....we called it "cascading".

My co-worker, a retired F-15 pilot and commercial airline pilot, told me about this incident several years ago.

This story brought tears to my eyes. Thank God for skilled professionals. This includes the Indonesian volcano mishap, The Louisiana hailstorm the Hudson ditching and the Siberian landing all without loss of life because of consummate skill and cool demeanor in an emergency that none of them ever expected to see.

The pilot's knowledge of gliders and the old airbase are essential to the positive outcome. It exemplifies the need for people to develop a wide range of skills and experiences, improving their problem-solving capabilities.

There was an Air Transat flight that suffered a fuel leak and ran out of fuel. They had to glide over 70 miles and land in the Azores.

Q: “How far do you think one engine will take us?” A: “All the way to the scene of the crash.”

Despite the mistakes, everyone was alive, which IMHO, makes the pilot a Hero.

We had to study this incident in school as part of our aviation human factors course, while we all knew the cause of the problem, we still had essentially recreate the investigation, and present evidence for our conclusion. One of my favourite projects from school. Thank you for the great video as always.

2 Other points come to mind. Primary radar at Canadian ATC towers had been removed, without a transponder ATC was blind to dead responders. At Winnipeg they still had an old set not yet removed physically. They had pulled out the old set, hooked it up and it could provide distance and direction and an improvised paper ruler was used to measure on the screen. Also a friend of mine was a Captain on the 767 and the performance when lightly loaded was so great they had to be careful as not to alarm the passengers in a climb. I believe this aircraft, not sure but a 767 Air Canada, was climbing lightly loaded out of Ottawa? In the climb the fuel settled in the rear of the tanks causing the same sequence of alarms to display as the pumps struggled to pull fuel from the tanks. I can't find my reference for this but it was a footnote in a book called "Freefall" written about this incident.

I'm always a huge fan of Canadian content on THG channel! I personally appreciate it very much and encourage you to keep it coming! :)

Aloha History Guy! There was a similar incident to this with a 737 owned by TACA Airlines (flight #110). The pilot and FO landed the powerless bird on a levy in New Orleans, next to a NASA facility. The plane was repaired and took off from the road at the facility (the road was actually an old runway). Interestingly enough, everyone survived (thankfully) and thr pilot mananged to pull this off while only having the use of one eye! Would love to see you do a video on TACA 110!

I remember this, as my father told me. He only talked of how talented the person flying was. Considering the stress and emergency time fame, AND the aircraft that was flown.

Growing up I attended Royal Canadian Army Cadet marksmanship events at the airstrip where the 'glider' once landed at, super cool to see this story come up on the channel.

11:14 Slips are highly effective at increasing drag and decreasing altitude without increasing airspeed. On traditional aircraft, the aircraft uses aileron which is countered by opposite rudder input. The aircraft drops like an elevator. I tried one many moons ago on IOE in a Saab 340B landing in JFK. We were high and close. I thought about what I would normally do from my time as a GA pilot. The slip worked but my instructor calmly looked at me and said while effective passengers were probably hanging in the aisles in the back. I never even thought of trying that again.

Captain Bob Pearson : *Deja Vu! I've just been in this place before higher on the street and I know it's my time to go!*

Lol. I lived in the town where ther shot the “made for tv” movie, about this incident. I knew all bout the incident, except for the maintenance ground crew. Your take on this was impeccable as always.

This event and the story of the Gimli Glider has long been known to road racers as the photo at 12:11 and full story were in AutoWeek shortly after it happened. It became road racing history. And while having a race occurring seems like near disaster, it was actually quite fortunate as the crews there had the equipment to put out the minor fires that occurred and would have been a serious problem if left to burn. There were also medical personnel at the track, although there were only minor injuries. This is not the only time a plane landed during a sports car race. In October 1980, a pilot landed his ultralight on the straight and Mid America Raceway immediately after the large production race ended, and mistakenly while the flag victory lap was being run.

How has this not been made into a movie? I was on the edge of my seat as you told this tale? If I saw this in the theaters I would be sobbing in relief the moment they came to a stop. In a world with so many amazing true stories it's perplexing that Hollywood can't produce anything but reboots

This story is so amazing. The incredible incompetence and negligence on the part of the ground crew and airline on one end, and the equally incredible skill and quick thinking of the air crew on the other end, and a healthy dose of luck to tip the scales. It's invigorating to say the least. Ten thousand blessings to those men and their families.

Ahh Red Lake a little gem of Canadian aviation history . A town that is an Ode to the bush plane and gold. Thanks History guy.

One commenter here mentioned a sword cutting both ways. I read once that the Treaty of Versailles that ended WW I was written forbidding the Germans from training pilots in powered aircraft. The writer posited that many older Luftwaffe pilots who later fought in WW II were experienced glider pilots first. He claimed that they had a skills advantage early on in the war. Whether true or not, glider pilots rock, lucky Capt. Pearson was one or there'd have been hundreds killed that day.

Captain Pearson was an active glider pilot in his spare time so was able to properly configure the aircraft for landing (manually) using the air itself & the control surfaces - superb airmanship!

been enjoying all your videos the last couple years. always a great story with excellent delivery!

Great presentation! Thank you for keeping history interesting!

As a Canadian pilot I’ve been hearing about the Gimli Glider for decades. That was an excellent synopsis and there were a couple of things in there I hadn’t heard before. Well done. Great opening graphic.

It's such a remarkable event for all the things that had to go wrong for it to happen, and all the things that had to go right for it not to be a catastrophe.

Holy Moses that's an amazing landing they made! Mistakes were made all around, but the flight crew sure came through when it counted most.

When I was young, my parents had a subscription to "Reader's Digest". I wasn't interested in most of it, but the "Drama in Real Life" articles were always excellent. And the joke pages were great! ;) I remember reading the story about this in one of those magazines. It was excellently written, and quite amazing to read about! The fire was the only real problem, and the captain refused to allow the plane to burn, so he grabbed a fire extinguisher and put it out. Amazing story!

Great writing / research. Thank you.

I remember that flight. I had worked on airplanes in the Air Force and understood what happened when the WHOLE story game out about running out of gas. Thanks for the walk back!

Thanks for the video. I enjoyed it.

This is so well done! Thank you from🇨🇦

I was across Lake Winnipeg that day but have often been watching the drag races where she landed. From other pics it looks like the nose stopped sliding just about at the starting line of the 1/4 mile dragstrip (it runs south the plane is facing north) maybe 30 ft from the Christmas tree. Its port wingtip would have been just over the chainlink fence where lots of us watch the races from. Thank God no injuries.

I've been waiting for this one.

Thanks for another episode. You make small pieces of history seem so much bigger. Thanks

I am very familiar with this story ( retired airline pilot ) however I love the way you tell aviation stories... well researched and well narrated... *Well done!*

Having grown-up in the general aviation industry, I had to watch this episode again. Thanks !

What an amazing story! Thank you for reminding us this forgotten bit of history.

Great story, thanks for sharing it with us!

Wow! What a great story! Thanks for sharing.

Brilliant as ever,thank you

Your videos are always iinteresting! thanks!

A slip actually uses the rudder to turn the airplane a but sideways to the slipstream. This means that the fuselage, which is normally facing the wind straight on is now going sideways to the wind, and this generates the needed additional drag. The reason this is not recommended in a big jet is because if the air flowing over the fuselage hits the engine it can disrupt the airflow and cause a flameout. As the engine was not operating this was not an issue.

Gimili Manitoba was an air force training base established during WWII. My Dad may have trained there during WWII. in 1987 I drove to Winnipeg from Calgary in my vintage 1952 Kaiser Manhattan car. My Uncle who I met up with at Winnipeg Beach close to Gimili trained as well in the RCAF in WWII talked a lot about this former base and about the accident. He took me to Gimili for an outing . We were strolling down by the pier when suddenly the Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney showed up in a boat and he happily went around shaking everybody's hands. I had fun taking pictures of him. He seemed to really enjoy himself.

Your content never fails to amaze me.

Thanks. Seems to be a Canadian thing. Air Transat 236 from Toronto to Lisbon lost all power over the Atlantic due to a fuel leak. It would have been a little scarier than over land and they did a dead stick into the Azores having glided for 75 miles. Once again, incidents are generally an accumulation of minor problems each of which in themselves are not catastrophic but one on top of the other push things over the edge. Having worked in the aviation industry checking dangerous goods, it was drilled into us that you make no assumptions, check everything, check it a different way, question everything and never just take someone's word for it. For a while I worked with Air Transat and have the greatest respect for them, the people I came in contact with were total professionals.

Beautiful story! Thank you!