Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (82 page)

It wasn’t until the flight attendants began preparing everyone for an emergency landing that passengers realized the situation was serious. People were instructed to remove their eyeglasses, dentures, and any sharp objects from their pockets and to fasten their seat-belts low and tight around their hips. Then they were told to assume the “crash position”—arms crossed, hands holding the top of the seatback in front of them, head resting on their arms—and prepare for a rough landing. In the galley, flight attendants were tossing silverware, coffee pots, food trays, liquor bottles, and any other loose items into the trash to keep them from becoming deadly projectiles.

Meanwhile, the air traffic controllers in Winnipeg had already called ahead to the Gimli police and fire departments, and they were racing to the old Air Force base as Flight 143 headed in for a landing. People on the ground got their first hint that something unusual was happening when a strangely silent jumbo jet suddenly sailed into view, flying very low over buildings and the local golf course. Terrified Gimlians scattered in all directions.

LOOK OUT BELOW

Had anyone other than Captain Pearson been flying the plane, there’s a good chance that Flight 143 would have already crashed. But, on top of being one of Air Canada’s best jet pilots, he was also a licensed glider pilot with more than 10 years experience. It turned out that he needed every minute of that experience as he tried to wrestle the blind, crippled jumbo jet safely to the ground.

Pearson had a few mechanical backup instruments to help him, including a magnetic compass, an artificial horizon (to help him keep the plane level) an altimeter (which gives the altitude), and an airspeed indicator. But since gliding a 767 to a landing had never been attempted before, what Pearson had to rely on more than any instrument...was his own judgment.

You can’t make snowballs at the South Pole...the snow is too dry and powdery.

He knew that if he came in too fast, he’d send the plane hurtling off the end of the runway into whatever lay beyond. Coming in too slow was even worse—the 767 could stall and nosedive straight into the ground. He had to glide in at just the right speed. But what
was
the proper glide speed? He had no way of knowing...he was going to have to guess.

The normal landing speed for a 767 is between 115 and 153 knots (between 130 and 175 mph), depending upon the total weight of the aircraft including the passengers, cargo, and fuel. Pearson finally settled on 180 knots (about 205 mph). Coming in that fast was likely to blow out tires on the landing gear, but he decided he couldn’t risk coming in any slower.

UH...ABOUT THE LANDING GEAR

As Pearson approached the Gimli landing strip, he suddenly realized he was coming in too high. He had to slow the plane down, which would cause it to lose altitude. Otherwise he risked overshooting the runway. To increase drag and slow the plane down, he told Quintal to lower the landing gear. Quintal pulled the lever to the down position and...nothing happened. The landing gear was powered by the hydraulic system, but the RAT (the pinwheel thingy) wasn’t generating enough hydraulic pressure to lower them.

Luckily there’s an emergency method: a switch that pulls the pins out of the landing gear doors. The landing gear then drops down and slams into the locked position. Quintal flipped the switch, and he and Pearson listened as the left and right landing gears noisily dropped and locked. But what about the nose gear? Suddenly another warning light came on in the cockpit—the nose gear had not locked into place, and there was no time to fix it.

SPIN CONTROL

Remember how the RAT propeller spins as the air rushes past it? Well, there’s a catch—as the airplane comes in for a landing, the air speed drops, the propeller spins slower, and less hydraulic pressure is generated. That’s why the landing gear didn’t come down when it was supposed to, and it’s also why the control yoke and rudder pedals were becoming increasingly stiff and unwieldy just when Captain Pearson needed them most.

Quick, get some sugar! In 1974 rain fell in Scotland that was as acidic as lemon juice.

More bad news: even with the landing gear down, Pearson was still coming in too fast. He wrestled the plane into a glider maneuver called a sideslip: he whipped the control yoke hard to the left, as if he were preparing to make a left turn, and practically stood on the right rudder pedal as if he were turning right. The effect of this maneuver was to greatly increase the drag, reducing airspeed. But it also caused the left wing to dip dangerously low to the ground. Witnesses say Pearson held this position until the wingtip was about 40 feet off the ground...
traveling at 180 knots
.

NO PLACE FOR A PICNIC

Could anything else go wrong? Yes. As you’ll remember, Gimli Air Force Base had two parallel runways, 32 Left and 32 Right, one of which was still used by private aircraft. Captain Pearson didn’t know which was which but he had to pick one, so he picked 32 Left. He held the 767 in the tilted position until the very last second, then leveled off the jet and prepared to land.

He had no power, no instruments, and hardly any brakes; the plane was coming in too fast; the controls were stiff, the nose gear was not locked into position; and some of the tires on the landing gear were certain to burst on impact. So what did Pearson see at the far end of the runway just moments before touching down? Race cars. Lots of race cars.

Winnipeg Air Traffic Control had told him that one of the run-ways was still used for aircraft, but what they didn’t tell him (because they probably didn’t know) was that the other runway—the one he was trying to land on—had been converted into the straightaway of an auto club racetrack. The Winnipeg Sports Car Club had held a race earlier in the day. The race was over, but the drivers, their families, and their cars—plus campers, tents, coolers, and barbecues—were all at the end of the runway. They were having a cookout.

Pearson didn’t see the cars or the people until the very last minute, and because the 767 was coming in so silently, surprisingly few people saw the plane. Many who did see it coming in—tilted with its left wing nearly scraping the ground—were too stunned to move. But it didn’t matter: there was no way everyone could have cleared the runway in time. Pearson was going to have to land the plane in a much shorter distance than he’d planned.

Several wars have been fought over the possession of one of Buddha’s teeth.

TOUCHDOWN!

Sure enough, when the 767 hit the runway, two tires on the right landing gear burst. But enough of them remained intact for Pearson to maintain control of the aircraft. He literally stood on the brake pedals, throwing his own weight into slowing down the plane.

Jet aircraft land on the rear wheels first; then, as the plane loses speed, the nose drops and the nose gear touches down. As Pearson had feared, when Flight 143’s unlocked nose gear hit the runway, it buckled and collapsed, and the nose of the plane slammed onto the runway.

But that equipment failure may have been a blessing in disguise. The fuselage of a jumbo jet is engineered to be tough enough to land on its belly if necessary, and that’s exactly what happened: the plane skidded and scraped down the runway, throwing up a cloud of sparks and smoke. But it also slowed the aircraft dramatically.

BRAKE DANCING

The plane was down, but Pearson still had to steer it to keep it centered on the runway. Normally you steer with the nose wheel, but since that was out of commission, he steered by shifting his weight from one brake pedal to the other, braking hard left when the plane veered to the right, and hard right when it veered to the left. Suddenly he noticed a metal guardrail off to one side. He headed for it. The 767 made a heck of a racket as it sheared one guardrail post after another, but the maneuver helped slow the plane even more.

The 767 finally came to a halt about halfway down the runway, 500 feet away from the auto club. The terrifying glide into Gimli lasted for what must have seemed an eternity, but only 29 minutes had passed since the first amber warning light came on in the cockpit. The time was 8:38 p.m. Had Flight 143 been scheduled for just an hour later, it would have been too dark to land.

A painting of a guide dog leading a blind man was found in Pompeii dating from 79 B.C.

TERRA FIRMA

The nose-down landing kicked up so many sparks that some insulation in the belly of the plane caught fire, but members of the race car club ran over with their fire extinguishers and put it out. Meanwhile, the flight attendants were working to evacuate the plane as quickly and safely as possible. Evacuating from the front of the plane was a snap—passengers just had a short jump onto the tarmac. The drop from the emergency exits at the rear was much longer, and a few people suffered minor injuries as they escaped the plane. Amazingly, they were the only people injured on Flight 143.

BLAME GAME

Air Canada’s preliminary investigation into the disaster determined that the flight crew and the ground crew were ultimately responsible. Captain Pearson was demoted to first officer for six months, First Officer Quintal was suspended with pay for two weeks, and three members of the ground crew were suspended without pay for 10 days.

Critics immediately accused Air Canada of blaming its employees in order to protect its own reputation, and the ensuing public outcry prompted a much larger investigation, which lasted more than a year.
That
investigation blamed the accident on the airline’s poor training and poor procedures, and questioned the wisdom of introducing a metric aircraft into an imperial air fleet.

The report not only exonerated Pearson and Quintal but also credited them with saving the passengers against very long odds. “The consequence would have been disastrous had it not been for the flying ability of Captain Pearson with valuable assistance from First Officer Quintal,” the final report read.

THE REAL CULPRIT

But what had caused the fuel quantity processor to fail in the first place? Investigators took it apart to find out. The culprit: a single bad solder joint—a poor electrical connection that caused the system to send a weak signal to the fuel quantity processor instead of a strong one. It was actually worse than no connection at all.

The fuel quantity processor knew how to handle a
complete
loss of signal: it was programmed to switch to a backup signal if the first signal failed. But the processor didn’t know how to respond to a
weak
signal, so rather than switch to the backup signal that was functioning properly, it shut down altogether and the fuel gauges went blank.

According to experts, the tap water in Montpelier, Ohio, is the world’s best tasting.

LESSON LEARNED

In the aftermath of Flight 143, Air Canada updated its procedures and improved its training. Most importantly, it assigned the task of calculating the fuel load to one individual who is qualified to do it even if the computers aren’t working. The “Gimli Glider” experience has not been repeated, at least not at Air Canada. (In August 2001, an Air Transat Airbus A330 with a fuel leak ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean. It glided some 60 miles to a safe landing at an airport in the Azores Islands.)

What happened to the 767? After the emergency landing, several mechanics were dispatched to Gimli to repair the jet enough so that it could be flown to Winnipeg for more extensive repair work. Believe it or not, their van ran out of gas on the way. The mechanics eventually made it to Gimli, and the plane made it back to Winnipeg. The damage was duly repaired, and the Gimli Glider was restored to the Air Canada fleet. It’s been flying without incident ever since.

At last report the plane is still in service. Are you reading this on an Air Canada flight? A 767? Ask the flight attendant if you’re riding on the Gimli Glider.

On second thought, maybe it’s better to wait until you’re back on the ground.

TECHNO-QUIZ

If you owned a model Mark IV FM, what would you have?

a.
A new SUV.

b.
A DVD player.

c.
A top-of-the-line radio.

d.
A nuclear weapon.

Answer:

d. You’d have the atom bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945. The bomb was designated “Mark IV FM” on its blueprints.

When electric eels meet, they change frequencies so their electrical fields don’t interfere.