Comments on: The Gimli Glider

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 02:16:56 +0000

I am returned.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 23:28:09 +0000

I’m back.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 23:46:40 +0000

Checking back.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 23:53:11 +0000

And again.

By: JarvisLoop

JarvisLoop — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 11:23:43 +0000

Finished.

By: pwd

pwd — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 20:00:18 +0000

Thinking a bit more about it if I was an airline pilot before a flight I’d probably want to have a look at the rough ‘miles per litre’ number for the aircraft which I’d get from the postit stuck on the dash above the fuel guages part of the displays and would then get the two ‘litres loaded’ numbers from both the fuelers fuel flow measurement and the fuelers manual dripstick / floatstick measurement making sure they both agreed then would work out how many miles I could do with the loaded fuel directly from the litres loaded number. If that looked good I’d do a more detailed fuel / distance assesment.
Great story, glad I read it and the comments where there was that interesting info on the dripstick and floatstick fuel measuring methods from Radiatidon.

By: pwd

pwd — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 18:57:16 +0000

Shouldn’t the Captain have got the fuel load in litres as the manual drip stick readings gave it and used that directly to get a good handle on the distance possible with that amount of fuel (in litres) for that particular aircraft. Also, while the aircraft is on the ground do they not measure the amount of fuel loaded using the drip / float stick method for all flights regardless?

By: David

David — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 15:24:38 +0000

Oi, Fact Speaker, You’re wrong.

The issue here is that Air Canada Pilots had been given insufficient training on the use of their new Metric airliner. They had been accustomed to converting to pounds of fuel, and the airport still delivered fuel in pounds, so to convert to KG’s of fuel was completely alien to them. They should have been given approriate training, which they were not. It is no surprise that the accident happened. The managerial structure of Air Canada is to blame, and both the Pilots should be celebrated for turning what could have been a tradgedy into a minor accident.

By: Fact Speaker

Fact Speaker — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 21:43:03 +0000

Would it be relevant to mention that the incompetent actions of the Captain, Bob Pearson, resulted in a plane falling from the sky, yet people are celebrating that he didn’t kill hundreds of people due to his negligence?

Bob Pearson personally certified that the “gas gauges” were nonfunctional on his 767, certified his own fuel calculations, did them WRONG and ran out of gas in the air because of his incompetence. That is negligent, incompetent actions by a COMMERCIAL AIRLINE PILOT. His actions resulted in the near destruction of a 767 airliner, its passengers, and innocent families and children on the ground. As it happened, the Captain narrowly avoided murdering people by crashing without crushing innocent civilians. Yet because he did not murder anyone, he is celebrated. What???!!!

Celebrating Bob Pearson is equivalent to celebrating a drunk driver who avoids killing a busload full of nuns and children, by skillfully turning away from crashing into them at the last moment. He’s a near murderer that didn’t kill anyone because of his actions at the last second. He and he alone crashed an airliner, due to his infantile miscalculations to begin with. This is by an airline pilot, with an extraordinary social and legal obligation to protect lives! The plane crashed due to pilot error! So, should he be celebrated because he narrowly avoided killing hundreds because of that? Is Canada on drugs or something??

By: Samuel

Samuel — Sun, 24 Apr 2016 23:51:13 +0000

I like the comments from people who seem to think that all airline pilots must be fully educated to every single system and every possible failure mode in their aircraft before being allowed to fly it. Apparently they have little concept of how complex a system an aircraft is, and how long it would take to learn even half of that information, and that without constant refreshing, they’d forget half of it anyway. The expense would be enormous. Who’s flying the aircraft while the pilots are taking an intensive 2-year course in the thousands of mechanical systems in their new aircraft? The pilot’s job is to fly the plane. In the rare cases there is an emergency, it’s usually caused by some obscure part, and there is usually plenty of time to access the manual and check it out, which is much easier than expecting them to know all these technical details IN ADDITION to their business of flying and navigating. If they don’t have time to read the manual, then they’re probably screwed anyway. I’d also point out that even if they were trained in every possible aspect of the aircraft before ever being allowed to fly it, they’d probably mandate that pilots reference the manual ANYWAY, just to make sure…memory can become confused, you might leave things out, different aircraft do things in different ways. An ex-Boeing 737 pilot might be on a 757, and a certain fuel pump fails, and he forgets and does what he would have done in the 737, and ends up blowing the other fuel pumps instead, because it was the wrong procedure. Referencing the manual is a safety check. Pilots are taught all the important things about flying the aircraft in normal operation, and many of the things they may be required to do in likely failure modes, such as a birdstrike killing an engine on takeoff. There is no point in cluttering them up with technical details about all the POSSIBLE things that might fail, because there are literally tens of thousands of things to fail on an aircraft. By the end of your career, after flying a 767 for 30 years, you’ll likely have experienced many different failures, and the more common of them you won’t even need the manual for. but there is no need to expect the pilots to know every single system on the aircraft. It’s not relevant. There isn’t even anyone at Boeing who knows the aircraft so well that they could explain everything about it without referencing a manual or two.
As for those who insist that they’d rather drive than fly, that’s fine, but the fact is that it’s an illogical response: you’re afraid to fly. Flying may SEEM more dangerous to you, but it is factually not. Driving is incredibly dangerous, even if you PERCEIVE it as safer. If it makes you happy to cater to you illogical ideas, ga ahead. But if you ask me, it’s a hell of a lot less comfortable driving 5,000 miles than flying, not to mention much more dangerous. Think of how many potential accidents you pass every mile you drive; you never know what drunken idiot or bad driver is behind that wheel, who’s driving in a car with a wheel that’s about to come off. “Evasive action” is all well and good in theory, but in most accidents, there is no WAY to “evade” it, or there would be no accident (although I’m sure that YOUR especially superior driving skills will be enough….). It’s hard to “evade” an idiot blindsiding you after running a red light at 50mph, or the distracted idiot who rear-ends you doing 60 while you’re sitting in line at the lights, or the cars slamming into you from behind when there is a pileup. I don’t car how good a driver you are, you can’t avoid most accidents, even when well rested and fresh (which you won’t be after driving 4,500 miles). The hell with that, I’m happy to fly. There is some risk in everything, but seeing as how there are 30,000 flights EVERY DAY, the few accidents that do happen seem a small percentage. Hell, the only other way to cross the ocean is on a boat, and I’m always reading about collisions and fires on boats. The only reason you don’t hear about more people dying on boats is because they all take a plane nowadays.