In 1983 an Air Canada Boeing 767 jet ran out of fuel before it could arrive to its destination. Nobody died in this accident due to the skill of the two pilots who were able to land on an airstrip in Gimli after 200 kilometres of gliding the plane with no energy. The pilots used a gliding technique called sideslipping that causes a lot of drag when a plane is descending. After this emergency land the aircraft was called the gimli glider and its tale has circled the globe.
Twenty five years after this accident the gimli glider is being retired to the Mojave Airport in the California dessert.
The accident is well described in the article and there are some funny declarations of the pilots.
The article also gives a detailed explanation with some pictures and a diagram of what is the slideslipping technique; despite this, I think it´s necessary some knowledge of Aeronautics to satisfactorily comprehend this concept.
2 comments:
I wonder what was the funny declarataion of the pilots.. Also it looks really unusual fortune!
Well it sounds funny now, but I guess it wasn´t at the moment it happened...One of the pilots narrates that while the aircraft was descending in such a terrible situation, he could see two boys bicycling on a runway: "One of the boys stared straight at me in the cockpit. They were pedalling like hell".
And you´re right, they were lucky, but mostly because the two pilots didn´t lose their nerves and knew very well that gliding technique.
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