Fuchs !!4KU9PSdLG started this discussion 15 years ago#5,181
I was talking to somebody about the Gimli Glider (Flight 143) incident that occurred on its trip to Edmonton, CA. Basically the story is that: in the 80s, a Boeing plane ran out of jet fuel and the engines stopped functioning, and the pilots managed to glide the plane through the air at 26,000 feet to an old air force base and managed to land it safely (albeit a rough landing where the nose hit the ground and they sped along). None of the passengers were seriously injured.
Anyway, this person told me that the incident was repeated in flight simulations and it's never been successfully performed by anyone, including the original pilot who actually pulled it off IRL. I tried googling this but I couldn't find any credible evidence of that claim, but it sounded really interesting to me. I have a friend who is studying to be a pilot and he oftentimes does flight simulations on his own (one time I went to see him and he was doing one. I asked him what he was doing and he had been sitting there for a few hours, told me that he was 'just flying across the Atlantic Ocean'. Sounds extremely tedious but they also do it as various real-time speeds, he was doing it at 1.5x real-time). I asked him about it and he didn't know if it was true or not. Do any Canadians know anything more about it?
Indeed! He was a real hero in that situation! I really liked the fact that he rescued those people from a serious emergency. He acted quick and smart. Those are the unsung heroes of our day. I watched some interviews with him and I'm glad he got a medal for it later. It was kind of shitty that he got demoted for six months after the fact but he acted heroically in lieu of a maintenance error. It's comforting to know people like that still exist among the human population even in these modern times. :D