40 years ago yesterday Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel mid-flight
damninteresting.com
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> presumably because a simultaneous engine failure had been too ridiculous for Boeing engineers to contemplate
This is hard to grasp, esp. given the presence of a RAT. You're giving engineering time to add a device specifically made to handle loss of all engines, but don't spend the time to write the corresponding procedure?
> ...had determined the fuel weight by multiplying the the number of dripsticked liters by 1.77, as indicated by the documentation. However, unbeknownst to the pilots and the fuel crew, this multiplier provided the weight in imperial pounds; the new, all-metric 767 was based on kilograms, and required a multiplier of 0.8
Darn, how many of these incidents will we require until we finally get rid of the metric system once and for all!
> The internal investigation into the incident laid the blame partially upon Captain Bob Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal, who should have observed the Minimum Equipment List (MEL) and grounded the aircraft since it lacked functioning fuel gauges
This is an interesting take - and as the pilot of the plan it certainly should rest on you that you're responsible for all to be in working conditions before you leave. However combining that it was apparently a frequent failure, with the corporate culture that's outlined, it's a good cautionary tail about resisting the pressure when something's wrong but "everybody's doing it anyways".
Are you serious?
There are 3 countries in the world not using the metric system. The non-metric system is difficult to use because it's using 12 based units with a 10 based numbering system.
Sure switching over is going to be painful but that's true either way, and there are quite a few examples of people switching to the metric system but none, as far as I know, the other way around.
The US uses metric for many, many things. Frequently side-by-side with imperial equivalents. AFAIK it's also the official position of the USG that metric is prefered.
> The non-metric system is difficult to use because it's using 12 based units with a 10 based numbering system.
OTOH, 12 divides evenly by both 4 and 3, which are common divisions.
(Does the US use Imperial as well? My most common experience with US vs imperial measure is in pints of beer, although Canada has caught on to the 16 oz pint, and don't even start me on 12 oz "pints".)
But there's more than one kind of ounce in the US. Fluid ounces are volume whereas dry ounces are weight/mass. From memory - and I memorized this from cooking - 8 fluid ounces (one cup or a half pint) is 8.337 dry ounces (assuming the approximate density of water).
Then there's metric horsepower vs. other types. It's clearly so much more natural for a horsepower to have a German name (pferdestärke!) and mean 735.5 watts instead of 745.7 watts (numbers copied and pasted, not checked).
Why memorise this to such precision if you're already approximating away the density? The job is already done for you, 8 dry ounces is approximately 8 fluid ounces, whether its water, milk, oil, or orange juice. If you need to measure liquid mercury, you're not working in the kitchen; if you need greater precision, you need to measure mass or volume directly as appropriate.
Because that was the precision used by the particular author I got it from. It's not that the fourth s.f. really matters. I think the 7 actually helps my memory by making the number distinctive and not just 8 1/3.
It's like remembering that body temperature is 98.6 F. It's obviously false precision and it's not even an accurate average, but it's the way it's traditionally recalled - plus it works out to exactly 37 C.
>8 dry ounces is approximately 8 fluid ounces
I did write "cooking" originally and it is a valid point that when cooking as opposed to baking usually a little more or less liquid is immaterial.
But I meant to include baking and, say, mixing drinks.
A 4-5% difference isn't always important, but it's often noticeable. I've been using a digital kitchen scale for >20 years, and I just find volumetric measuring cups annoying compared to going by weight. I don't want to go back and forth filling a container and checking it on a level surface, to eyeball a meniscus, to wait for every drop of a viscous liquid to fall, or to sift flour.
I don't cook or bake with liquid mercury, but I use sugar, which is ~7 ounces per cup, and flour, which is (according to me) 4.25 to 4.5 ounces per cup. That's considerably different from 8 = 8.
> OTOH, 12 divides evenly by both 4 and 3, which are common divisions.
If we could go back to the dawn of civilization and choose a base 12 number system that would be nice, but a bit late to change now. (IIRC ancient Sumerians used a base 60 number system, but that eventually fell by the wayside).
That being said, nothing prevents one from choosing dimensions that are a multiple of 12mm e.g. when woodworking.
Interestingly, I don't hear pro-US-unit people apply this to money. The UK used to use money not based on 10, but changed during the 1900s. So it's not without precedence.
If 12-based is so great, I'm looking forward to the US listing prices as "10 dodecadollars, three dollars, and 3 dodecacents".
There are some beautiful conversions too: 1 m^3 of water is 1000 kg or 1 metric ton. It is also 1000 liters of water.
Wait until you run into the Imperial system's slug, a derived unit of mass, or the blob, the inch-based unit of mass in the Imperial system. 1 blob is 12 slugs.
The metric system is just logical and cleaner than the Imperial system. No crazy conversions e.g. 1 ft = 12 inches, or 1 ft / 5 = (1 ft * 12 inches/ft \ 5 = 2.4 inches = 2 inches and 0.4 inches is almost 25/64 or 13/32nds!!)
1m = 1000mm or 100cm and 1m / 5 = 200mm or 20 cm. 1m / 3 = 0.3 (repeating decimal) m or 333.3 (repeating decimal) mm. No fractions needed.
I can't tell you how many people struggle to read a tape measure down to a 1/16 or 1/32 or in machining to 1/64 and not really grasp it. Uncertainty in measurement is a recipe for disaster in science and engineering.
Also you kind of have to include the UK in the list of countries that use imperial measures. We're mostly metric but the roads are in miles/yards and if you tried to take pints (which are larger than American pints at 568ml) out of British pubs in favour of the smaller half-litre it would make the party that did it instantly unelectable. People are nearly always measured in feet and sometimes weighed in stone (14 lb) too. I'm a little surprised we don't measure fuel efficiency in miles to the litre because that would be pretty typical of the British approach to measuring things.
I actually don't think it's a bad thing, a bit of mental maths never hurt anyone and it underlines the fact that units of measurement aren't handed down on a stone tablet as a fact of nature.
Definitely something only a government with the ability to essentially erase history would able to pull off.
FYI here in metric-land (well, Italy) we normally have glass of beer in the size of regular (600ml) and small (400ml), and half litre is usually used only for weissbier
However, in pubs and restaurants, the standard glasses are 568ml and half of that, for a half-pint.
Are you suggesting we should stop calling it a pint and instead demand that we order “568ml of Hobgoblin, please?”
Why would we do that instead of just ask for a pint?
No matter what system a country uses, there’s nothing stopping a bar from selling 568ml portions of beer, and giving you one of those when you order a pint.
The law (via regulations) stipulates what sizes can be sold. As an example, this[1] from 2011:
> The centuries-old cry of "fancy a pint?" may soon become "fancy a schooner?" under plans to relax the strict rules dictating drink sizes.
> Current regulations mean draught beer must be sold in pints (equivalent to 568ml), halves (284ml) or the little-known "thirds", and wine in measures of 250ml, 175ml or 125ml
Also, is it really illegal to serve a 150ml glass of wine in the UK? That’s insane… A 750ml bottle of wine is supposed to have 5 glasses in it, not 4.28
They actually aren't. They're all measured in metric, then roughly translated to imperial for the signs.
On jul-25 at 11am pdt, charles_f was standing out to comment on an interesting aviation story. Seeing in passing a reference to issues regarding imperial and metric systems confusion, and given the popularity of this kind of debates on the internet, they decided to set course on a "joke".
The joke was thusly constructed: the metric system is commonly used across the world and much more sensical than outdated imperial system, and people commonly announce their discontent for the latter and ask to discontinue its use. Therefore commenting using the opposite point of view as if it were an evidence, and in a serious tone, had a chance to trigger surprise and interrogation in the reader's mind, quickly resolved by the idea that the author wasn't being serious and making fun of this debate, and triggering a chuckle. This type of jokes is commonly referenced as "sarcasm" in the professional jokers world.
But before the joke took flight, the joke funniness sensor wasn't working, as well as the joke and sarcasm announcement systems. The author sent Robert, their left moustachioed fat finger, to dip in the joky tank, and check if it was fun. Robert answered "yo bro yain't starting to finish all your jokes by 'just kidding' like a brainless soccer dad".
Based on this manual reading the author was reinforced in their certainty that the joke would work and maybe make someone else's life a little brighter for a half second (500 time thaus, for those using imperial), and decided to take off.
We all know the result. The joke worked, as some people understood it, but not all detected that it was one.
The author would like to apologize for, and retract the "<joke/>" that they added as a comment to their original comment, since adding a revelation that a joke is, indeed, a joke, undercuts the element of doubt and surprise necessary to maximize its effect and duration. The same goes for lengthy, rational discussions about said joke and should be avoided. (It turns out that this particular type of joke can be delivered in their lengthier form, which get ruined if its actual, underlying agenda is revealed in plain text). As such the author would like to also immediately retract this statement and apologize for it.
>adding a revelation that a joke is, indeed, a joke, undercuts the element of doubt and surprise necessary to maximize its effect and duration.
/s is a plague on internet humor.
I imagine the RAT's primary purpose is to provide the power needed to restart an engine if all engines had stopped.
But this is a moot point, given there was no fuel left...
It makes no sense to capture all the permutations of that. Just get it down somewhat safe.
I love you think not other way around.
Converting to metric for fuel seems reasonable but measuring fuel in weight (mass) and volume would still lead to errors using only meteric.
Distance and speeds use a mix of feet, statute miles, nautical miles, meters and kilometers depending on the context and country. Eliminating the difference would mean new approved flight manuals for each airplane, and quite expensive changes to flight instruments as well.
There’s a really good fit with feet for altitude in the U.S. that just works well. 1000’ of separation for opposite direction traffic, and 500’ separation between flight rules in the same direction. Directly converting to meters breaks all the simple math involved. Whereas if we keep the math simple, it alters airspace density and capacity.
Anyway, there’s no significant desire or effort to drop any of these units.
On the topic of switching over: obviously you'd not do it all at once, but phasing in metric on new planes would at least fix the issue eventually.
Is it a high-altitude, low-power approach to the runway, where full flaps are used to bleed off more altitude and speed? How is that different from a regular approach?
Instead of the most areodynamic way of flying straight, and the worst aerodynamic way of flying completely sideways, you power-slide the plane so that it's not dead-straight and the extra wind-resistance slows you down.
One of the pilots had sail-plane experience from riding a one-man ice-boat with a sail attached over an icy lake - which is where he learned the maneuver. You can slow your speed by the same trick, it's just not usually done with an airliner.
By far the most interesting thing going on is that you’ve destroyed lift. The ailerons are acting as spoilers essentially so the plane starts to want to drop out of the sky.
I’m a pilot, and the sensation of a slip is definitely not that you’re rapidly losing forward groundspeed, it’s that you’re suddenly not gliding, and instead kind of dropping out of the sky.
This is correct, but I want to note that every Private Pilot (in the US at least) learns this maneuver, and it is required to be demonstrated to an examiner on the Private Pilot practical checkride.
Just like to take a boat directly across a fast river you have to aim it “upstream” - same thing can happen with a plane on landing.
It’s hard to explain but one feels different from the other.
That is actually not completely true. You are mainly increasing drag to lose altitude quickly WITHOUT gaining additional airspeed. Remember, backside of the power curve, pitch for speed, power for altitude. You could push the nose down to give up altitude in a power out, flaps out configuration, but you might overspeed your flaps by gaining airspeed. That is why you have the Tokyo drift.
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/july/fligh...
One way to aggressively descend would involve just pointing the nose down, but this has the effect of increasing speed (trading altitude for airspeed). You need a way to descend more quickly without increasing speed. Generally, this is done by adding more flaps (increasing drag), but in the case of the Gimli Glider, their hydraulic systems were down, so they could not add more flaps.
A forward slip is a maneuver in which you roll the aircraft such that the top of the wing and side of the fuselage are exposed to the oncoming air (relative wind), and you use the rudder in the opposite direction to keep the aircraft flying straight (with respect to the ground track). When properly executed, the rudder and aileron cancel each other out so you keep flying straight across the ground, but the nose of your airplane is not aligned with the direction of travel, and the top and side of your airplane is exposed to the oncoming wind, significantly increasing drag, and thus descent rate.
Sounds like drifting. If I get your drift.
Here are a few key selections from https://pilotinstitute.com/forward-slip-vs-sideslip/
> Both forward and sideslips involve opposite aileron and rudder input. In a forward slip (typically used to increase drag and decrease altitude), the aircraft’s nose points away from the direction of flight, with the lowered wing facing the direction of flight. In a sideslip (typically associated with the final stage of a crosswind landing), the aircraft’s nose points in the direction of flight, regardless of which wing is lowered.
and
> To understand the difference between a forward and a sideslip, we need to understand the slip in general. A slip, at its core, is an uncoordinated turn. In other words, when the ball of the turn coordinator is not in the middle, you’re in a slip.
So in general, a slip is a situation where you're banking, but not turning, due to opposite inputs to ailerons and rudder (i.e. between stick and pedals).
As I read through all that, I thought I was coming to a decent understanding. However, finally,
> The jargon is unnecessarily confusing – you move forward during a forward and a sideslip, but you don’t move sidewards during a sideslip; you technically move sidewards during a forward slip!?
Hmn.
Forward slip is mainly used to lose altitude without increasing airspeed, such as emergency descent or when too high on approach for landing.
Side slip is mainly used to maintain lateral alignment with runway centerline during a crosswind landing.
The side slip is predicated on a crosswind, properly done the two forces equal. In effect like “leaning a shoulder into the cross wind” to stay laterally and longitudinally aligned with the runway.
Does a turn require a curve in the airplane’s direction? What exactly constitutes a turn? If a plane is in a bank, there is a horizontal component of lift. But if there’s no change in direction (either heading or ground track) is it a turn?
While there is such a thing as a slipping turn, it means an (insufficient) change in direction for the bank angle. If the rate of turn is zero, it’s just a slip.
Conversely I don’t see how you get a skid without a turn.
It is a way of dealing with the situation where the wind is not coming straight down the runway while landing a light power aircraft. You point the aircraft straight down the runway and add in enough bank to overcome the drift to the side. You use the rudders to prevent the aircraft from turning due to the bank.
Pearson was performing the forward-slip in the less common context of gliding. While flying gliders the problem is that they produce a glide angle that is much too shallow to ever be able to control exactly where you are going to land. Normally you use spoilers (AKA dive brakes) to control glide angle but the spoilers might fail or you might need a steeper approach angle than the spoilers can provide. So you fly sideways to force the side of the glider through the air and produce more drag. You still need to take into account any crosswind while simultaneously adjusting the glide angle while staying lined up with the runway. It's a bit tricky and it takes some practice to maintain the skill. That's why I get to demonstrate a forward-slip as part of my yearly glider check flights.
Pearson did this in an airliner with constantly changing control forces and completely nailed it on his first try. He touched down something like 100 feet past the threshold which is exactly what you want to do in a case where you don't have a lot of braking available. This was one of those times where you wanted the guy that lives aviation and not the nine to fiver.
This is done by applying rudder and ailerons in opposite directions (e.g. full right rudder and enough left aileron to still be heading towards the intended spot).
Typically this would be a bad thing as it feels weird and is inefficient, but in this case the whole point is to be inefficient in order to lose altitude without gaining too much speed.
In a forward slip the goal is to descend more quickly than you otherwise could. If you just point the nose down, the airplane will gain airspeed. If you're trying to descend quickly you'll overshoot where you're aiming. What you want is a lot more drag, which allows you to point the nose down (reducing lift) without gaining airspeed. Normally flaps, spoilers or airbrakes allow you to do this (depending on the aircraft). If you don't have these, as the Gimli glider didn't, what can you do to increase drag? Well, you can use the whole fuselage as an airbrake.
To do this, you can use the rudder to yaw the plane, so it's flying a little bit sideways. Say we yaw it to the left. If the wings have dihedral (they point slightly upwards) then the right wing now has a greater angle of attack than the left wing - the right wing produces more lift and so the plane will bank left by itself without touching the ailerons. If the wings are swept back, as on large jets, yawing left will mean the right wing is longer with respect to the airflow than the left wing, and it will bank left even more. To fly pointing left, but not turn left, you cross the controls: you use the rudder to yaw left, and the ailerons to bank right. The airplane is now flying partly sideways, pointing to the left of the flight path, with the right wing lower than the left wing, but if you balance rudder against ailerons correctly, you fly in a straight line. The fuselage is partly sideways to the wind, creating a lot of drag. The airplane is skidding downwards to its right, and you need to pitch the nose down to maintain airspeed and avoid stalling.
And then you've got to be fairly well coordinated as you come out of the slip so you keep flying in the direction of the runway.
Source: I used to fly gliders. Presumably swept wings increase the amount of aileron needed, but the principle is mostly the same.
If you have the chance (and didn't already do so), make a few flights in a glider with an FI.
I thinks it's a different kind of flying and allows you to be more confident in certain situations such as slips, slow flights and engine out landings.
Here are some suggestions. As one of the child comment stated, go fly a glider for a few hours. It will immensely help with flying "not straight". I started it for gaining better understanding of flight but ended up finishing a commercial ticket on glider as well, because I enjoyed it so much and also just for the bragging rights.
Secondly, cross control is perfectly safe till the time you pull back on the stick. That is how you get into cross control stalls, the starting configuration for a spin. When you are slipping, you should actively trim nose down, (that you should have done already, remember you are approaching to land), and maintain just a little forward pressure as you fly sideways. I would recommend, grab a competent CFI and get cross control stalls nailed. I know it is not a part of PPL, something I am very pissed about. Hell, PPL in US does not even need spin training. Bollocks, if you ask me....
Private Pilot ACS Section IV Task M requires both demonstration and knowledge of "Forward Slip to a Landing"
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/training_testing/tes...
It's actually a really nice way to land, I wish powered aircraft had this.
Anything a small plane can do a big plane can (very few exceptions), so they can slip just fine, like they can do a 60° bank just fine - but it becomes VERY uncomfortable for the passengers - who now will feel they’re “outside the plane”.
Only if you try to maintain altitude. If you let it descend it can be a 1G maneuver and no one will be able to tell unless they look out the window (at which point they will probably freak).
Have you actually flown a forward-slip?
It might feel unnerving on the first attempt but once mastered, it becomes a normal procedure one can rely on as a pilot.
Some planes require it for landing, e.g. aerobatic airplanes with a high angle of attack - otherwise the pilot would not be able to see the runway.
Yes, I'm a Private Pilot. I've done them dozens of time. Still feels weird to be flying sideways and cross controlled.
The linked article is not bad but reads a bit too much like a Dan Brown novelization for me taste… “ The mustachioed Captain Pearson pulled out the trusty Boeing handbook, his fingers dashing through the pages…”
When this captain handed the plane over to the captain of the incident flight, there was a misunderstanding in the conversation that led to the incoming captain believing the prior captain had been flying with blank fuel gauges and only manual fuel checks. In an unfortunate coincidence, the second technician who was checking the plane at this time disabled both channels to try and troubleshoot the issue again, but failed to return the system to the “one channel” functioning state (apparently because he was interrupted by a request to help with the manual fuel check, ironically).
The second technician’s mistake would have been noticed by the pilots, except that due to the misunderstanding, they were expecting to see blank gauges. Those were the initial conditions that allowed the “pounds, not kilograms” mistake to threaten the flight.
With flight 143, the sheer brilliance of the flying after the fuel ran out - plus the too-neat story of “it was all caused by metric / imperial conversion” can easily distract from the real lynchpin of the whole incident, which was as you say why the plane was flown with non-functional fuel gauges when that was contrary to the Minimum Equipment List for the aircraft. Taking off with blank fuel gauges was the core safety rule that was violated: the mistake with the unit conversions was necessary to make that violation dangerous but it wasn’t really the core of the accident.
IIRC, a cascade of human errors is also what happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.
It's an incredible enough event that it's worth reading both!
> ...when flight attendants opened the rear emergency exits, they found that the tail was so high in the air that the slides didn’t touch the ground. Sliding down them was less like schoolyard fun and more like jumping off the second or third floor of a building
But then it proceeds showing a photo of deployed rear exit slides, and judging by human standing there they almost touched the ground, the difference is like half that human at most. Now, while I agree that jumping from 1 meter may be too much for some people, comparing it with 3rd floor jump is totally out of place. What am I missing here?
And to the person who said they routinely slip Cessna landings... different bird my friend ;) Remember, the slower they get the less the hydraulic assist was working. It's a wonder they were even able to straighten out.
Here's a video on the forward slip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxy2MnUnfUM
I hope there is some kind of 'case study' that pilots study about this. It should not be up to the pilot to ground the plane; shouldn't that be up to the airline or chief engineer?
It's not up to the pilot; it's up to gravity. No fuel left means the plane is going down somewhere soon.
I don’t think anybody reading this story could have possibly assumed the plane could perpetually fly without fuel…
Aerospace engineer here. I've worked in airworthiness and maintenance ops, though never on the 767. "Grounding an aircraft" is usually a colloquialism, but there are several people who can declare aircraft to be unserviceable and that includes both pilots and maintainers.
For the uninitiated, what happens is the maintenance organization does what's called a Maintenance Release[0] which is the legal act of transferring the aircraft out of maintenance and certifying it is in compliance with what's called the Approved Type Design. Because of the real world being what it is, there are legal ways to accept an aircraft that isn't in compliance with the approved type design and these take the form of Minimum Equipment Lists (MELs) which are basically a list of pre-approved deviations from the Type Design for which risk management has already been carried out. For example in some aircraft you can take off without life rafts, if your aircraft carries a legal operating restriction to stay within $distance of dry land.
Upon accepting an aircraft for a particular flight, the pilots do their own acceptance checks, the common term for which is "preflight".
Anyways, the long and short of it is that yes, the pilots can and should ground the plane if it's U/S. But maintenance can and should as well. In this case, the pilots were sanctioned because they contravened the MEL for the 767 which was a contributing factor to the incident.
[0] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-G...
The website isn't getting much donation https://www.damninteresting.com/damnload/
Dedication.
EDIT: Lol yeah, it was in September 2005— the Dreamhost side is long gone I guess, but DI itself remembers: https://www.damninteresting.com/dreamhost-site-of-the-month/
And yes, looks like based on the donations page (https://www.damninteresting.com/damnload/) it is indeed still hosted there.
I didn't know a space-irony continuum exists, but makes sense. ;-)
https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/15765zq/40_years_...
OP was on the flight with his parents and had the tickets framed. Also the Captain of the flight is now his stepdad and his dad was head of maintenance for Air Canada at the time.
Interesting. What kind of demotion did Boeing or Air Canada receive?
There hasn't been an accurate fuel gauge in aviation since the discovery of powered flight.
Air Canada changed their pilot training, changed several manuals and documents, standardizing the fuel weight units (which was already in process), changed the circuit breaker, established a flight safety organization, and changed fueling procedures.
The story does not say if any person responsible for those parts got any negative consequences, thought one can hope that the hunt for blame was short. It usually doesn't serve to improve security, and in this case there was a long list of consecutive mistakes by a large number of people that allowed for the accident to happen. Among those were also a culture of overriding the Minimum Equipment List, something which Canada had outlawed 5 years before this accident.
The only thing I found about it online is a couple of tweets from other passengers of the same flight.
Hell, I had to unpack them & explain them to the pilots every once in a while. (They'd often form some interpretation that worked out "best" ... for them personally).
The pilots are in the same plane as you. They aren’t going to just let the plane run out of fuel because some person on the ground says “sorry, can’t land at this airport yet, hang out for awhile”.
If there was a real emergency they’d be putting the plane down on the nearest runway-shaped surface no matter what.
Further, I’d wager the pilot said something along the lines of “we have twenty minutes of fuel before we need to consider diverting to [alternate airport]” or something to that effect.
Maybe pilot wanted to say what there is still enough time for them to keep waiting, but in that situation didn't though how that phrase would sound for the passengers.
Edit: "with all lights off" - turning off the lights for a landing is regular procedure, nothing unusual.
> turning off the lights for a landing is regular procedure, nothing unusual.
The lights were off for about an hour as we glided toward Pittsburgh.
> Your strong language
My assessment is that I was told my luggage would continue on to DC without me if I didn't board in an attempt to get the plane leaving as soon as possible after refueling. I didn't care enough to get back on, and learned the following day that they had actually removed my luggage before departure.
Planes diverted to Columbus until they couldn’t accept any more diversions, at which point the rest diverted elsewhere. If any planes had a genuine fuel emergency where Columbus was the only option, other planes with more fuel would have been rediverted elsewhere.
EDIT: Looks like everyone else jumped on this at the same time. lol.
The plane did not run out of fuel. If the plane had run out of fuel, the flight crew would have prepared you for a potential crash landing. There would be no question whatsoever. It would have made national news. The plane and crew would have been grounded pending investigation by the airline and the NTSB, and not gone on to resume its journey shortly thereafter. Hell, everything else aside, it would have sat dead on the runway, unable to taxi, while passengers disembarked on the inflatable slides.
Your plane had plenty of fuel. It followed established procedure where they waited for as long as they could, diverted when the fuel situation warranted a change of plans, and landed at the alternate airport with more than enough fuel for at least one go-around and likely two.
This bit isn't right. They would have brought a tug out to the runway and towed the aircraft to a remote stand, then used a staircase.
The slides are only used if there's imminent danger of fire. People often get injured using them.
I don't think the public has access to the SRS but the FAA and NTSB do.
They took my luggage off the plane and United agreed to put me on the next flight to my final destination for free even though tickets were $750 that day.
Dispatch and route planning (and the fuel that goes into the planning) is really intense and takes into account hundreds of factors including stuff like how much fuel do I need if I can't land at my nominated backup airport and have to go to a secondary backup airport.
Domestically, checked baggage can fly even if you don't. It depends on the situation.
Except when they don't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34506004
When anything well-operated deviates from the norm, people are going to question / panic, and rightly so.
I could be wrong about it being illegal, I was just repeating what an (other) airline employee told me. But they did take my luggage off the plane after telling me that they weren't going to.
But there's always https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo
There are numerous FAA requirements about this depending on if you are IFR/VFR, the airport, the expected weather, etc. but the bottom line is sufficient fuel to:
1) Fly to your intended destination.
2) Fly from the destination to the alternate (if required).
3) Fly for an additional 45 minutes at normal cruise speed (minimum).
What the pilot was saying was that they had 20 more minutes until they had to go to Pittsburgh. If it took 45 minutes instead of 20, it was because the computer calculated that was exactly how much more time they could hold.
There was no gliding on your flight. It may have felt that way during a descent at flight idle.
The flight may have been scary to the passengers, and people may not have wanted to get back on, but I'm sure it was quite routine to the people up front.
Source: US certified commercial pilot, Aero. Sci. degree. Certified ATC.
I believe you but this is yet another reason why it was inappropriate for the pilot to mention this to passengers. Nearly everyone around me was visibly distressed as we "idled" to Pittsburgh.
> The flight may have been scary to the passengers, and people may not have wanted to get back on, but I'm sure it was quite routine to the people up front.
Maybe for the pilot/copilot but the flight attendants' facial expressions when I got off the plane did not suggest to me that this was routine.
Further consider that other than this story—where the aircraft ran out of fuel due to a wildly unlucky confluence of technical and human failures—you have never heard of a passenger jet running out of fuel midair. Through decades of storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, and every other natural disaster imaginable, we have found a way to get planes onto the ground with fuel to spare.
It was totally avoidable had the crew been able to convey the message to ATC that they had zero fuel left.
This isn’t quite true, there was that poor woman sucked out of the Southwest flight in 2018. But your broader point is 100% correct.
Again, Swiss cheese model. This is some Final Destination shit, not something anyone not an aircraft designer should spend time worrying about.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/25/alabama-airp...
988
Dialing that, at least in the US, will get help to anyone who needs it
You're correct. I've edited.
Apparently it was written by the sites creator.
What a very nicely written article.
Often I find long reads a bit of a labour to get going with - lots of words just for the sake of it.
But this was just marvellous.
> Despite the lack of time, Moody made an announcement to the passengers that has been described as "a masterpiece of understatement":
> > Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.
The plane had been acting bizarrely it bounced very hard on take off and then did not gain much altitude for the duration.
There was another rough half an hour back to land in a terrible cross wind.
Then a few moments on the tarmac before it was announced that it was because additional checks were required and the plane was running entirely fine. A bird strike meant they had to return as a precaution.
I'd take the clear and transparent understatement over what I can only assume is a corporate line which covers things from entirely not worth mentioning and we're about to crash and burn.
> When a stereotypical airplane (or spaceship) pilot speaks over the radio, either to flight controllers on the ground or to his own passengers, he does so in a very soft, smooth register, just barely loud enough to pick up on the radio, probably with a faint American Southern accent (unless he's British, in which case it is an upper-class one). He uses radio jargon, even when he doesn't really need to. A true Danger Deadpan never loses his cool or changes his tone of voice under any circumstances whatsoever, a habit which is often Played for Laughs. ...
> In Real Life, this makes a lot of sense. Even if your plane's lost two engines and half a wing, the last thing you need is a bunch of scared people in the back of the plane panicking and raising hell; you can't be screaming "OH GOD WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE" over the radio. Not to mention the fact that if you stay calm and actually tell Mission Control what the problem is, you won't throw away what may be your last chance to actually work out how to fix it or at least get to the ground in one piece.
The "Real Life" section includes Yeager (with a long quote from The Right Stuff with an example of the voice) and Moody of BA Flight 9, plus many others, and comments:
> Yeager is the most known example and the book "The Right Stuff" made a nice legend, he probably isn't the first who started to talk that way. For example, Mark Gallai (a Soviet test pilot who started his career in the 1930s) recounts just this way of reporting over radio about as soon as radio was introduced on airplanes. Let's just repeat: when you need to report your condition to ground crew, you are going to speak calmly and clearly, no matter what's happening with your plane.
<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=English+unders...>
Though the behaviour predates that specific terminology:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_understatement>
Adding in "stiff upper lip", a similar notion, brings the date back to the 1830s:
<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=English+unders...>
''Patriotism also permeated those British war movies of the 1950s and 60s – The Dam Busters, Reach for the Sky, The Cruel Sea, The Heroes of Telemark, The Battle of the River Plate, Cockleshell Heroes. It camouflaged itself in self-deprecation, but the rousing march music in the finale always braced our belief in the rightness of our cause. We have long made fun of all the period cliches, unable to believe that anyone talked like that. But when researching my new book Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, I found that German officers really did say to the British paratroopers taken prisoner: “For you the war is over.” One of my favourite remarks, recorded at the time by a junior doctor, is the reaction of Colonel Marrable, the head of an improvised hospital in the Netherlands, when Waffen-SS panzergrenadiers seized the building. Still puffing gently on his pipe, he says to his medical staff: “Good show, chaps. Don’t take any notice of the Jerries. Carry on as if nothing has happened.” I have always been doubtful about the notion of “a national character”, but a national self-image certainly existed during the war and for some time afterwards.''
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/may/29/antony-beevor-t...
[EDIT] I wanna say the example was a mishap on a ride somewhere, and he wrote something to the effect of "by the time they get where they're going, the French will have forgotten all about it, while the English will only have just begun what will become an excited, endless retelling of the tale". Except I'm sure he worded it better. Fairly sure it was Forster. Somewhere in his (extensive) essays and articles, I think.
Fuel ran out due to a leak, and the plane glided for over 120 kilometers before landing at an airport.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/gimli-glider-40th-an...
''Europeans: afterburners off after 3 minutes. Canadians: afterburners off after 3 countries.''
So not only was she a passenger, but also the other chap in the cockpit was her husband.
Facepalm
"However, unbeknownst to the pilots and the fuel crew, this multiplier provided the weight in imperial pounds; the new, all-metric 767 was based on kilograms, and required a multiplier of 0.8. As a consequence of this documentation disconnect, Flight 143 had left Montreal with roughly half the necessary fuel."
Double Facepalm
So a product defect that saved lives. I wonder if there other examples
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wnja3h70DM
Not so lucky was Avianca Flight 052 that also ran out of fuel mid flight and crashed into Long Island residential area.
Kind of like how talking to somebody who works in any restaurant kitchen will scare you from eating out anywhere.
Fortunately, most aircraft crashes happen due to multiple, uncorrelated failures lining up to cause a disaster.
Right now (4:45pm) https://www.fox5atlanta.com/traffic reports interstate traffic as low as 20mph. There aren't that many places reaching even 70mph.
My favorite time driving through Atlanta was 2am on a weekday. 7 lanes wide with no traffic.
Definitely don't mind those late night drives, as long as you keep an eye out for people not signaling or not having their lights on.
It'd be awesome if we could invest in actual public transport instead of more lanes but...
Very safe: trains and subways, buses, passenger aircraft, rollercoasters, elevators
Very unsafe: personal automobiles, small aircraft
https://www.simscale.com/blog/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metr...
The math was correct, they just did the math for pounds of fuel on board instead of kilograms of fuel on board.
I mean, 1.7 kg / l is not just wrong, it is obvious wrong. Fuel and oil does not sink to the bottom of the ocean.
People lack day-to-day familiarity with the units, so what should be obvious mistakes go unnoticed.
It turns out aviation, much like football is a game of inches . = 2.5471 cm
A nautical mile corresponds to 2.9229 cm. A survey foot is not much different than an international inch. I hope there's some oddity of history I'm missing!
“state-of-the-art glitches”, I’m using that!
I see from skimming other comments that this is widely shared sentiment.
Other than a nerd-sniping exercise I don't see the point of going down this rabbit hole, because on an aircraft with pax the pilot's job isn't to screw around playing Chuck Yeager and estimate fuel with test pilot techniques.
If they can't fly with confidence that they're safe, then the pilot's job is to put the fucking aircraft on the ground as soon as able.
Roughly, for each passenger there's an equivalent mass of fuel on the plane.
If you're working with thin margins that might not be enough, but if someone's shorted the craft half its fuel load, as was the case for AC143, I'd suspect this would be evident.
The film is mostly human drama, but the first fifteen are a really gripping, suspenseful depiction of the air disaster at the center of the plot, from the cockpit view. And it's based on a real-life incident. I enjoyed the whole thing, and the aviation part really pulled me in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236
"This was also the longest passenger aircraft glide without engines, gliding for nearly 75 miles or 121 kilometres"
This was only 8 years after Canada's 1975 switch to metric.
I used to follow Patrick Smith, aka "Ask The Pilot". He didn't start with a glider.
Now I follow Scott Manley. He just got his private pilot license, and did not start with a glider. Nor did my missionary pilot uncle. Nor did a co-worker of mine who was learning to fly.
Hereabouts I see gliders sometimes, but I far more often see powered aircraft. I get the impression there are far more powered flight schools than glider schools; https://www.flightschoollist.com/california-glider-schools/ lists 13 glider schools in California while https://www.flightschoollist.com/california-airplane-flight-... list 91 for powered flight.
E.g. gliding is really big in Germany where it gained popularity especially after WWII.
It's fairly cheap and usually organised as hobby clubs instead of commercial schools.
For example a club in my area offers young people, ages 15-25, flying lessons until their first solo for a flat fee of 400€.
Many people who are interested in aviation use this to get their first piloting experiences while still in school. Some then take the next step of becoming commercial pilots.
Motorised flight on the other hand is much more expensive and (on a private level) done by people who, usually, already have a (well paying) job.
Struggling to see what glider knowledge applies here (other than, perhaps, glider pilots slip to land more frequently since it isn't like they have power to remove).
That would probably be part of the "Fuel Quantity Indicator System" that was broken on this specific plane.
https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales/cautionary-...
> The Gimli Glider officially rejoined the Air Canada fleet after a bit of body work
This might be the OG "that'll buff out" meme
Haha, clever.
Makes me think about a comparison video regarding ADHD that had the same student recorded while watching: A) a math video, and B) Star Wars.
I think one thing all humans need, is a bit of the ol' campfire-esque narrative. We need a good story. We love to be told one. So, maybe the trouble is not math per se, it's that nobody (or almost nobody) is teaching math with some kind of the right narrative approach.^0
This story contained a lot of technical and detail information, but I find it all easy to recall (not that I have much trouble most of the time), but I didn't waver in reading this. I was glued to it the whole way through. I didn't just get the story, I got the analysis, the why, and the details. In a single read, that happened without distraction.
And I loved it. It feels satisfying. I didn't realize I was learning, but learning was the natural consequence of being told a great story.
So I think that you can make anything teachable as long as you can teach it using the right narrative vehicle.
0: I know not everybody has trouble learning without narrative. Some people can "create their own adventure" armed with only a textbook, and work their way through it in the idiosyncratic order and style that best suits their individual "wiring". I know that not everybody has trouble learning STEM (I didn't, when I worked at it myself), but I know lots of people do. And I find myself being distracted so easily when studying some technical videos or content, but not others. That's also common. What I think is that every human evolved to learn in "roughly" the same way, in the same sense that we "all" have capacity for spoken language, I think we all have "an innate superpower" to learn things delivered on the right narrative vehicle. We evolved to communicate orally, "around the campfire" as the euphemism goes. This wasn't just entertainment, it was how small tribes of us survived, learned together, and structured and ordered their world to ensure survival. So, it's vital. I think we can make almost anything teachable to almost anyone, if it has the right narrative. I think so many people think "I'm no good at math", or "I couldn't be a programmer", or programmers think "I don't get art" or "I'm no good at psychology" or whatever. I often feel a twinge of sadness, because it seems like they're missing out when they shouldn't be. I feel like shaking their shoulders like a mad person and saying, "Of course you can!" in the kind of crazed-Gatsby-esque way that Jay is convinced, “Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” Except I'm not crazy. I'm sure this is a thing. I'm sure that in future, we will figure out how to deliberately deploy this innate narrative technology we all come with to make learning of everything more efficient! :)