Original subtitles

A brand-new 767

A catastrophic failure at 26,000 ft

Air Canada 143, go ahead

I just lost both engines

Holy cow!

I am talking to a dead man

The crew is out of options and running out of time

They are at the controls of a 95 ton jet...

...that is quickly falling from the sky.

This is a true story

It is based on official reports and eyewitness accounts

In placid skies over Central Canada

Air Canada Flight 143 is just passed a halfway-mark of its journey

from Montreal to Edmonton Alberta

The plane is carrying 61 passengers and 8 crew-members

It is July, 23th 1983

Rick Dion is an Air Canada maintenance engineer

I was going to Edmonton with my wife Pearl

and my young son Chris, who was 4 years old

This was the beginning of a 2 week vacation for us

we were all pretty excited about going on this new airplane.

Compliment of the Captain

This was my first flight on the modern 767

The company has just acquired them

I was interested in going to the cockpit to see all this new technology

fit in with the work that I did on aircraft

The Captain on this flight is Bob Pearson

He is 48 years old and he spent more than 15,000 hours in the air

His first officer is Maurice Quintal, who has more than 7,000 hours of flying time

Come on in

Pardon me, gentlemen

I knew Bob Pearson from the small flying club that I attended in St Lazare

He was one of the local pilots there, that used to do some gliding

He also flew the Ultra-light Lazairs

We had departed heading North-West

a nice, clear sunny day in July

We were at a 39,000 ft

There were few airplanes that flew that high in 1983

We requested 41,000 ft, which got us further above the jet-stream out of the West

The crew may have accumulated a lot of hours in the air

but very few in this plane

It is Boeing's latest and most advanced wide-body jet: the 767

An army of microprocessors in the belly of the plane automates so many functions

that the flight-engineer's job has been eliminated

This is one of four 767's that Air Canada has recently acquired

The plane itself has only 150 hours on it.

Quite a difference here, huh

The cockpit is different in that all the old instrumentation that we were accustomed to

Mostly was all gone

It was all CRT display like small TV screens

It was a new high-tech airplane,

which involve quite a change for the crew

and maintenance personnel, people handling it

This was a new aircraft for both the Captain and I

At that time, I had 75 hours on that airplane

Everything was new for me

Pilots and maintenance crews are both still getting to know this airliner

Captain Pearson explains to Dion

how he handled a small problem with the engines on an earlier flight.

Fuel pressure

Why would that be?

A warning alerts the crew to critically low pressure

at one of the plane's fuel pumps.

The 767 has three main fuel tanks:

two in the wings which are always used

and one in the CENTER only used on long distance flights.

Electric fuel pumps draw fuel from each tank

and feed it to the plane's 2 engines

The low pressure warning could mean that one of the pumps needs maintenance

but it could also be a more serious issue:

a lack of fuel to be pumped

Another low fuel pressure warning sounds

this one from another fuel pump on the plane's left side

Pearson's Flight Management Computer tells him he should have plenty of fuel

for the remainder of the trip

The 767 also has separate digital fuel gauges

but on this flight, those gauges are out of service

The warnings don't make sense

I used to be involved with transferring fuel

and I know that when you're trying to empty a tank

It will start flashing periodically, and than the pump will re-prime

and then later go out

In this case, it appeared to do exactly the same thing

Captain Pearson knows, that if the left tank is running low

the right tank may be low as well

Let us head for Winnipeg...

...now!

Pearson wants to land as soon as possible in case he is running out of fuel.

The crew is still more than 700 miles away from their original destination, Edmonton Alberta

The nearest major airport is Winnipeg, Manitoba

a mere 120 miles away

We're showing lots of fuel on board on our Flight Management Computer

and normal fuel checks cross checked with our fuel on our flight-plan

We elected to divert the flight to Winnipeg,

where Air Canada has a main maintenance base

Air Canada 143

Ron Hewett has 20 year experience as a radar controller.

Yes, sir, we have a problem

We are going to... ...a requesting direct Winnipeg

Air Canada 143 cleared

Take position direct Winnipeg

cleared to maintain 6000 descend

He didn't tell us what the problem was and it is none of my business

Give him what he wants, get everybody out of his way

That is about what we do

Pearson now begins to descend from 41,000 ft

The low pressure warnings are spreading to more and more of the fuel pumps

Quintal instructs the cabin crew to prepare for an emergency landing

I think we have problems with our fuel system

We are diverting to Winnipeg

All flight attendants to front galley please

I hope these are just false warnings

Rick, can you think of anything we haven't done?

OKAY...

... we've lost the left engine

Losing an engine erases any doubt:

Flight 143 is in fact running out of fuel

OKAY, checklist single engine landing

Pearson is trained to land a 767 with one engine

No one has ever tried landing with none

He scrambles to get his plane down, so that he doesn't become the first

With only one engine powering Air Canada 143,

and with the possibility of the other engine shutting down

the crew prepares the passengers for the worst

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your in charge flight attendance speaking

Due to mechanical problems we will be preparing for an emergency landing

Please, return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts

Your crew is fully trained to deal with the situation

and as you may have noticed

some crew-members have already started to prepare the aircraft

I had no idea, like the rest of my crew-members, that there was a problem with fuel

I had no idea why we were going to Winnipeg

Approach and landing

Flaps will be 20

As they are doing that drill,

the right hand fuel pump low pressure light was flashing as well

much like it did on the left

They were quite busy carrying out the first engine out

not watching the pump-lights which was right at my eyebrows

I knew that there was a shutdown, too

What was that?

How come I have no instruments?

Our beautiful colour engine and flight instrument displays...

...simply went black

It is exactly what Pearson had feared.

He has lost both engines.

At 26,500 still 75 miles from the nearest major airport...

...he is out of fuel

Air Canada 143, go ahead.

We just lost both engines

When both engines shut off,

I think holy... I am talking to a dead man

It is highly unlikely that anybody is going to survive this

I could see them trying to make a turn

and spinning in

An airplane's engine doesn't only provide thrust

They also generate the power needed to manipulate the plane.

It would be completely uncontrollable,

but modern airliners are like a Swiss army knife with one last blade hidden away.

In the event of a loss of power,

they automatically deploy the RAT, or Ram Air Turbine

It is spring-loaded

and the propeller that drives the small hydraulic pump

is about size of a propeller you would see like on a little Cessna 150

This arm catapults down into the slipstream

This propeller starts to turn, drives this hydraulic pump

and gives you basic systems

It was pretty quiet, flying without motors

Pearson knows the time is running out

He needs directions to the closest landing strip

143, This is a mayday

We require a vector on to the closest available runway

But the loss of the plane's engines has had an unexpected consequence at ATC

They're gone

They were right here

We have lost them on the screen

I need primary radar

143, We have lost your transponder return in our attempt to pick up your target now

We work on transponders it is called secondary radar.

We take the pilot's signal to ping the aircraft

Commercial jetliners are equipped with a transponder

a device that transmits coded information which ATC use to determine the plane's location

But when Flight 143 lost its second engine

only a small number of items got back up power

The transponder was not one of them so the plane disappeared from Hewett's screen

Flight 143 is somewhere East of Winnipeg

but no one knows exactly where,

or how far it is from the airport.

In spite of its enormous weight,

a 767 doesn't plunge from the sky when it looses its engines

its aerodynamic properties keep it in the air, but slowly coasting to earth

I was trying to figure how many miles we were moving ahead

versus how many thousands of feet we were dropping.

But Quintal doesn't have the instruments which provide the information he needs

to make that calculation.

Since he lost the plane's signal, Hewett cannot give Quintal that information either

Controllers hurriedly work to rig up a way to find the plane

Just before landing, you will hear the command: 'brace for landing'

Brace immediately, and stay braced until the plane comes to a complete stop

There are two was to brace:

1. Bend Forward: raise your arms and ends against

Bryce Bell is a businessman on his way home to Edmonton

As soon as they announced that we were making a non-scheduled stop in Winnipeg

I immediately wished I hadn't had the two drinks that I had had

because I thought: You are going to have a split second here

and this plane is going to explode in flame

and the decision you make in that split second will depend on how alert you are

Because their modern equipment cannot see Air Canada 143

the controller switched to old fashioned radar which doesn't need a transponder to locate planes

I got to turn up my true radar (the reflective radar)

which is not nearly as good

and we don't use that at all

OKAY, I've got it

65 from Winnipeg, 45 from Gimli

143, we have you at 65 miles from Winnipeg and approx 45 miles from Gimli

For the first time since losing power, the pilots know their distance to Winnipeg

We gaan gezellig naar Winnipeg

Quintal, however, thinks that Gimli is a safer bet

Gimli, Manitoba has a decommissioned air force base

It is about 20 miles closer than Winnipeg

As luck would have it, Maurice Quintal trained at Gimli while in the armed forces

He knows it well

45 miles to Gimli

There is long runway

Is there emergency equipment at Gimli?

Negative emergency equipment at all, just one runway available, I believe.

No control tower and no information on it

Pearson must consider the possibility of a crash landing

If he has any chance of making it to Winnipeg, which has full emergency support

he knows he must try for it.

OKAY, then we would prefer Winnipeg

Fine, 143, continue your present heading

It was about regrets Things I hadn't done in my life

It was about ways I've treated the odd person here or there that I wish it more gently

It was about how stupid I was at some of the things

I used to make big issues out of that are so insignificantly

when it really comes down to what real reality is about:

It was pretty devastating.

And I remember telling a mother with a baby and I had...

My daughter Victoria

telling this woman that it will be okay and I did

I was so proud of myself that I could be so straight with her

and tell her that it was going to be alright and really looking her in the eyes

OKAY, how far from the field are we now

You are 35 miles...

...39 miles from Winnipeg

Now that controllers can see Flight 143 on radar

they can provide Quintal with the information he needs

to figure out if he can glide as far as Winnipeg

1.5

About 8500 ft above the ground, Captain Pearson can see his destination

Winnipeg's Airport is less than 35 miles away

We are visual

but the news from Quintal is not good

Bob,

Maurice was keeping track of our distance by input from Winnipeg ATC

and out altitude

and calculated our profile and came to the conclusion that...

...we might not make the runway to Winnipeg

We can last maybe another 20 miles We are not making Winnipeg

Quintal has calculated that at the rate they are falling

they would hit the ground a full 15 miles short of the runway

How far here from Gimli?

You are approx 12 miles from Gimli right now

Where is it?

On your right

Turn right to a heading of 345

I will say you have 10 miles to fly

OKAY, fine

We are going to go there

I am going to check up my family

You guys don't need me right now, huh?

When I went finally to sit down in my seat, this is where I thought:

This is it

Landing gear down

First officer Quintal lowers the landing gear

Because there is no hydraulic power, Quintal does what is known as a gravity drop

letting the gear's own weight drop and lock it into place

The two main gear are heavy,

they fall immediately and two green lights confirm they've locked

but the nose gear is lighter, it doesn't lock

We could hear the main gear clearly falling and locking

I was not aware that the nose gear was not down and locked

It was the last minute and if it is something that you cannot control...

...you don't talk about it, you don't mention it

The main thing was:

bring the aircraft on the runway

5 miles to touchdown

We have the field inside

5 Miles from Gimli,

Pearson and Quintal finally see a runway they can land on

but there is a problem

It is going to be too steep, too fast

Yeah,. I know

Pearson is almost at the runway, but he is much too high above it

If he comes down at a normal descend rate, he'll miss the landing-strip

but if he comes down steeply, his plane will gather a dangerous amount of speed

he won't be able to stop before the end of the runway

With a normal approach we have leading edge and trailing edge flaps

which allow us to slow the air-plane down

and fly at a slower speed, safely.

We did not have real flaps as they run off the main hydraulic system

So, what are we going to do?

So we discuss we had two possibilities

One of them was to 360° turn

and lose the excess of altitude

On the other hand, I thought, it would take about 3 minutes

and we were already descending at a rate of 2500 ft/min

Only about 3000 ft above the ground,

the plane doesn't have enough altitude to make a full circle

It would hit the ground before making it back to the landing strip

Pearson chooses a 2nd option

Well, I guess I 'll just slip it

Pearson decides to try a manoeuvre, called a side slip

practically unheard of on commercial airliners, but sometimes used by glider-pilots

and Bob Pearson has a lot of experience flying gliders

I am just going to slip it down till we are almost at the end of the runway

Side slipping involves what is known as crossing the controls

Pearson plans to force the aircraft into a sideways free-fall

allowing it to drop quickly without increasing its forward airspeed

Pearson has never actually performed a side slip in a commercial aircraft

but he is attempting one now in a Boeing 767

The only way that I could control our speed was to induce drag in the fuselage

by cross controlling the rudder and the elevators on the tail

and the ailerons and the wingtips

and causing the aircraft into a configuration

Then, I can vary that to increase or decrease our speed

or increase or decrease our descend rate

Pearson controls the plane's descend by using his rudders and ailerons

to chance the angle of the plane

Crossing the controls involves tipping the wings in one direction

but turning the aircraft in the opposite direction

putting it side ways into the oncoming air

As Flight 143 begins to drop towards the earth

Quintal is about to discover something he did not expect

The runway he trained at 15 years ago

is no longer a runway

Captain Bob Pearson is out of fuel

out of engines, out of options

If he can't line up with the runway at Gimli, he doesn't get a second chance

Pearson turns the yoke left

and pushes the rudders to the right

The plane slips...

...to its left

We were sitting in the CENTER, which is the heart of the air-plane

so it is pretty solid there

I thought there is a real good chance here that we'll be Al right

However, when he put the air-plane into a side-slip all that went out the window was

If he hits the wing or something, he starts to catapult and roll

that is not going to work anymore

The 767 loses altitude quickly, ploughing sideways through the air

When I looked to the left of the aircraft,

I was looking directly on the ground

because the air-plane is angled quite, maybe 60° of bank

The bank angle was quite high and the nose of the aircraft was quite high

It was an awkward moment

If it was awkward for me,

I can imagine for the passengers, it must really have felt odd

I saw a sand-trap from this golf-course

And I thought: We are going to crash!

Pearson must maintain a crucial balance:

He has got to slow the plane enough to be able to land safely

But if he slows down too much, the airliner could lose his lift...

...and plummet to the ground

When a pilot is normally landing an air-plane he is manoeuvring the flight controls

and operating the thrust levers...

...pretty continuously at most landings.

So, I was doing the same thing (without the thrust levers)

This is where I thought at my daughter Victoria, being alone with my husband

and how he was going to cope with our daughter

and how she was going to cope without having a mom

As they approach, Pearson focuses on his target:

The threshold of the runway.

I got tunnel-vision like I have never had it before

It was just our speed and our relationship with the threshold of the runway

But now, only hundreds of feet from the ground,

Quintal sees that their troubles are far from over

The Gimli landing strip has been converted...

...into a drag racing strip.

Today is Saturday and it is not just a race-day.

It is a family day on the Gimli strip

Racing is done for the day,

but the airfield is filled with members of the local sport-scar-club,

camping out with their families for the weekend.

Two children have decided to peddle the length of the runway.

They don't hear the plane coming for them

without engines, it is silent

And one thing the 767 doesn't have...

...is a horn.

Brace, brace for landing

The nose hit with quite a bang on the runway

It was like a shotgun going off within feet

The front landing-gear gives out immediately

Pearson brakes hard, 2 tyres blow out.

The bottom of the right engine scrapes the runway.

I was a robot, no emotion at all

Finally, Pearson sees what is in their path

I looked up and could see two boys on bicycles.

They must have been probably a 1000 ft down the runway for my position when I saw them

At one point, I could see he raise his head

And his surprise there is this big aircraft

I can still remember the look of terror on their faces

So, they were close enough for me to see that.

With no nose-gear to steer with,

Pearson's only hope of driving the plane left or right

is by varying the brake pressure on the two main landing gear

That is where my heart started to pitter patter a little bit

The kids panic and try to outrun a plane that is travelling about 200 mph

I knew I couldn't take the air-plane into these boys

and I was going to take it off into the grass in the race-side

There were campers along the West-side of the runway

that I didn't notice until after we've touched down

The nose was on the ground

and I can still remember at the left side people standing by their barbecues.

Dino Calvert is at the track with his friends for a weekend of racing.

One of the gentlemen in the pits suddenly jumped in his car, he took off

you don't drive like that in a pits usually

I looked up and all I could see was smoke rising

Pearson does all he can to stop the plane in time

Holy crow

The plane ploughs into a guard rail, installed on the middle of the runway

17 minutes after running out of fuel,

Air Canada Flight 143 comes to a final stop on the ground.

Somebody yelled: Yahoo! or something and then people started applauding

We were so grateful, we made it!

When you believe you are going to crash,

you do believe that the air-plane is going to break apart

You are going to have fire

EVACUATE!

Thick smoke is quickly filling the cabin

The crew doesn't take any chances:

They want everyone off the plane as quickly as possible

There was a sense of joy and then a panic

We've got to get out of here

Less than 2 months earlier,

an Air Canada DC-9 made a successful emergency landing in Cincinnati

only to burst into flames on the tarmac before all the passengers could get off:

23 people died.

The crew and passengers of this flight want to avoid a similar faith

It took maybe just a few seconds to come to a full hold on the runway,

but the cockpit was full of smoke

Passenger evacuation checklist

Fuel shut off

Cabin pressurized

Electrics off

Checklist complete

Time to get out of here

Come on guys, get a fire extinguisher

We grabbed a fire extinguisher on our way

You never go to a fire at a racetrack without having a fire extinguisher with you

And we run up towards it

the doors open up and you see the chutes come of, like a spider has growing legs

The plane ended up eventually standing almost what appeared to be almost on its nose

When I opened my door, and I saw that the chute was so steep

I thought: Oh, my goodness, how do I get these passengers to go down?

Due to the nose-down angle of the plane, the 2 rear slides don't reach the ground

10 people are slightly injured during the evacuation

most of them coming down the steep rear slides.

I heard on the West radar frequency, one of the 767s says:

He is down OKAY, He is in one piece

I said: OKAY!

because all of these people were going to sleep in their own bed that night

There is still a lot of smoke, coming from the plane's nose

It turned out it was about 6 inches of insulation between the inner and outer skin...

...from friction, that was starting to burn

The flight attendances have good news:

all 61 passengers have made it off the plane

There is not so much as a single serious injury

Bob Pearson has done what no one has done before:

he safely landed a 767 with no engines, gliding to safety from more than 26,000 ft

The event made international headlines immediately

People are already asking how one of the most sophisticated passenger-planes in the world

could have run out of fuel

By the next day, the investigations has already begun.

Bill Taylor and Diane Rocheleau of Canada's Aviation Safety Bureau

are among the first investigators at the scene

I was a junior mechanical engineer at the time I've been working for transport Canada for a year

Going to the field for the first time was very exciting

It was new, it was a major aircraft

Once we got into the fuel-quantity indicating system

I left Diane to deal with the specifics of the computer system

First, Bill Taylor needs to confirm what everyone has been telling him:

that the plane is out of fuel

Investigators drain the tanks, collecting less than 17 gallons of fuel

The 767 can hold almost 24,000 gallons

It is like having 5 tablespoons of fuel in a midsize car

Taylor next needs to examine the possibility that the fuel leaked out during the flight

The other checks involved looking for any evidence of fuel having been lost

I even went so far as to go into what they call the dry bay of the aircraft

I'm a bit claustrophobic, so

I really wasn't too enthusiastic about going up in there,

but I crawled up and had a look around with the flashlight

and confirmed that there was no evidence of fuel having been lost in there

That leaves Taylor with only one conclusion:

Flight 143 took off without enough fuel

Now, investigators need to find out why

Diane Rocheleau begins looking for the answer to that question

in the plane's sophisticated electronics bay, located beneath the cabin

The 767 was a newer type aircraft,

It did have a lot of computerized systems and I guess back in 1982

These were coming on to the market at a fast rate and they were newer types of electronic system

Rocheleau confirms that a computerized unit, the digital fuel gauge processor,

had been malfunctioning on this plane.

There was no spare in Montreal, so it couldn't be replaced.

Rocheleau takes the component for testing

It was decided early on that the processing unit

will be taken to the manufacturer, Honeywell in Indianapolis, for testing.

And I was tasked with taking the unit, so we went through all the testing procedure

At one point we did discover that it was a malfunction with the unit

During the testing, we went more and more in depth and we found out that one of the circuits

It is called an inductor coil, it was a very small part

It was encapsulated at the manufacturer Encapsulated means it is covered with plastic

You cannot visually see it,

because it is covered with plastic and you cannot see the coil itself

Once we took over the plastic case

we could see that the solder joint had not been made properly

which caused the malfunction in the system

The faulty processor explains why Pearson didn't have fuel gauges for the flight

but doesn't explain why he didn't have enough fuel

The inoperative gauges were clearly flagged

Ground crews wouldn't have relied on them when they were fuelling the plane

Investigators confirm that the ground-crew did perform a manual check of the fuel

before take off

I just need to know what you did next

We did a manual check of both tanks

then, we pump enough fuel for the trip

Flight 143 should have taken off with enough fuel for the trip

Okay, thanks...

...it helps

Investigators now have to figure out how one of the world's most advanced jetliners

took off with half the fuel, necessary for its flight

The investigators know, that with its fuel gauges out of service

Flight 143's fuel tanks were checked manually

Then, the fuel for the trip to Edmonton was added to the tanks

But before the plane could be given more fuel,

a crucial calculation had to be carried out

Pilots need to know the weight of the fuel on their plane

but fuel trucks pump jet-fuel by volume

In order for pilots and fuellers to communicate

a simple routine translation between volume and weight has to be made

Investigators check and double-check that math.

The fuelling records from the day of the accident provide the answers they have been looking for

This is a typical fuelling record

But when investigators examine the calculations for Flight 143

...they look anything but straightforward

The document clearly shows the amount of fuel in the right and left tanks

but investigators are troubled by two particular numbers

One converts volume to kilograms

the other converts it to pounds

They shouldn't be using both

So, did you convert to pounds, or to kilograms?

To pound...

...no, to kilo

Can I see that again?

Further interviews with the technicians and crew reveal that the events on Flight 143

were caused by human error, involving poor calculations

and ultimately inadequate training

The technicians, refuelling Flight 143, got muddled in their calculations

while converting the volume coming out of the fuel truck

to the weight of the fuel in the tanks

No one who saw the calculations that day noticed the basic error

In 1983,

Canadian ground crews were used to converting the amount of fuel leaving their trucks,

into pounds

The 767 was the first plane in Air Canada's fleet to have metric fuel gauges

Its fuel should have been measured not in pounds,

but in kg s, which requires a different calculation

Flight 143 needed 22,300 kg for the trip

But pilots and technicians let it leave with 22,300 lbs instead

Because a pound is about half a kilogram, the plane only got half the fuel it required

which explains why Pearson's flight computer told him he had plenty of fuel

He entered the wrong amount of fuel to start with

In the past, the flight engineer calculated the fuel loads

This accident raises an important question:

Who's job was it with the two men crew?

Better training is definitively an issue in an incident just as that

If everyone is trained

and the lines are drawn as to who is responsible for what

then, there is no ambiguity on it,

People know what they are responsible for

In this case, it was open ended

they were not aware who was responsible.

A subsequent enquiry found that none of those involved that day

was trained in metric calculations

Not the ground-technicians...

...not the pilots

I had not received any...

neither of us had received any training at all, and do these calculations

The computer that had replaced the 767's flight engineer was broken

and no one knew who should be doing its job

Air Canada 143 was essentially down a man

The goal is to prevent a recurrence, this particular event

We also find out other system that might have been either at fault

or maybe they could cause a problem in the future

and you do try to prevent a recurrence

It took a string of mechanical and human failures for Flight 143 to run out of fuel

but another failure that day may have saved some lives

If the plane's nose-gear had not collapsed,

it would have taken Pearson much longer to stop

The plane could have slid into the people who were at the strip that day.

which would have had catastrophic results

There could have been more injuries or even loss of life

Pearson and Quintal were partly blamed for their roles in the incident.

A government enquiry recommended that Air Canada re-evaluate the training

of flight-crews and ground-technicians in metric fuel conversions.

It also recommended that the airline keep more spare parts,

such as fuel gauge processors.

Rick Dion retired in 2003 after a long career as Air Canada's coordinator of maintenance control

First Officer Maurice Quintal was promoted to Captain, in 1989

Captain Bob Pearson went on to fly 10 more years for Air Canada

his experience at Gimli shaping the rest of his career as a commercial pilot

This experience affected me mostly by making me more relaxed as a pilot,

giving me the feeling that as much as I trained for all those years that:

There is always that question about how you are going to perform when the chips are down

And now, I have the feeling that no matter what as long as the aircraft stay together,

we will get it safely back on the ground

It is a relaxing experience

It is the knowledge that you know: under stress, you can perform

before that, you don't know

You just hope you will and you train for it...

...but you never know

With the things that they had to deal with was magnificent

I think that it got proven in the simulator of Vancouver

They tried out the same circumstances with several crews...

...and they all crashed

Probably, the most important thing that came out of it is the realization that

when something new is introduced

special attention and training needs to be accomplished

for people, to be aware, what they are dealing with

When we had landed and the air-plane was all in one piece

I thought: Wow, I got another chance and to fly again

Because of a tragic like that,

you want to take your deck of cards and fire it in the air

You are truly free

I guess from that point of view I find it very difficult to say, but

Gimli was maybe almost the best thing that ever happened to me,

next to meeting my wonderful wife and marrying her

Two days after the landing at Gimli...

...Air Canada's 767 was back in the air on its way to Winnipeg for repairs

A quarter century later, that same plane is still in service

and it still carries the nickname that Bob Pearson earned it:

The Gimli Glider

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