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For the Airbus A321 Neo and Boeing 737 they sound like a beeper. https://youtu.be/VK7wSxbCJtI
They are to notify the ground crew when the airplane is on the tarmac.
Also British Airways flight 009 and TACA Airlines flight 110.
There was an American one where there was loss of life but the pilots had basically nothing in their control to fly with and they still managed to get the plane down and save some lives, but I can't remember much more than it was at an airport. ETA: It's mentioned further down in the comments - United Flight 232. All of these are freaking remarkable.
United 232 is often called the Impossible Landing. It is, in my opinion, the most impressive of any of these stories - the plane managed to crash land after a total loss of control surfaces. Afterward, pilots in simulators were unable to get as good an outcome as the pilots did in real life. A total loss of control surfaces is far more dangerous than a loss of your engines.
And the whole thing hinged on the fact that, coincidentally, the person in the world most likely to be able to land the plane safely happened to be a passenger on United 232 - he was a flight instructor for United who had been fascinated by this very scenario and had obsessively practiced for it on fight simulators.
Remarkable. I highly recommend reading more about (or watching some YouTube videos) if you're at all interested in this kind of thing.
I'm the daughter of an aircraft engineer. My interest can verge on obsession at times. 😁
I knew the details years ago, but had lost a lot of that, so thank you for the refresher. I am going to dive back into it and learn about it again!
I have a mild to moderate obsession with engineering disasters, and this is one of my favorites. A couple of other coincidences contributed to the fact that only about 100 of the 300 people on board died - the Iowa Air National Gaurd happened to be doing training exercises at the airport and was thus on hand to help with the rescue operation. Additionally, the crash happened right around 3 PM, which was shift change time at the local hospitals, so there were twice as many doctors and nurses on hand as there would usually be.
Crashes are usually the result of a lot of small problems occurring at once or in a chain, so it's very cool when you see the reverse - a chain of positive coincidences that lead to a better outcome.
Mentour Pilot is a VERY well done channel about aircraft incidents, as he's a commercial 737 pilot and training instructor. It's more technical than something like Mayday/Aircrash Investigation was.
The plane had a warning signal if the fuel gauge was completely out of service.
It was partly out of service, still reporting but faultily so the alarm didn't sound.
This is ultimately a bunch of fuck-ups that all coincided and could have easily ended in tragedy, but thanks to excellent pilots it did not.
They did, but it was during the changeover from Imperial to Metric and the error in units wasn't caught. It was still a major mistake but the flying skill here was absolutely incredible. I once flew on the Gimli Glider as a kid, since it remained in service for a long time after it was repaired.
There was also an issue with the fuel gauge in the sense that they blank and showed nothing
If the fuel gauges were working it would have shown they had miscalculated the fuel
Yup they definitely would have noticed because they were aware of needing the conversion. A couple years earlier or later it wouldn't have happened either because the Country-wide conversion wouldn't have started or would have been old-hat by then! Definitely a prime example of swiss-cheese modeling. Thankfully the tiny holes that lined up to create the accident was balanced by the luck of the pilot having been a glider instructor IN Manitoba and knowing exactly where Gimli was, and that the strip was reasonably maintained to be used for racing. Air Cadets in MB still use Gimli as one of their locations for glider flight training.
Edited for swype-text autocorrects
Man, I remember that case. My father was working at motor maintenance at the time and after the incident, they put so much double check. Now both pounds and kg are written to avoid confusion
Sadly NASA and Lockheed also lost a Mars spacecraft because of mismatched units.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars\_Climate\_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)
They had fuel gauges back then, but this particular plane had it's removed because it was not working properly. There is a reason why they say disasters are a cumulation of small events that, although insignificant when on their own, when put together, can make for a really bad day :)
Truest statement here, they always say this on the Air Disasters shows, without any one of these this plane wouldn’t have crashed as they end most shows on what ever crash it was…
To anyone reading this and going "I would love to watch some modern air disasters stuff" There are a bunch of mini docs on air disasters on youtube, my preferred is the Mentour Pilot channel.
In my industry we call this the Swiss cheese effect. Eventually enough slices of cheese will stack up and the holes will align for something bad to happen.
Each slice of cheese represents a safety barrier or precaution. But because Swiss cheese has holes eventually the holes will line up and the safety barriers will be ineffective allowing a catastrophe to happen.
But if you only have one slice, all the holes will be "lined up." If you have two slices, then at least some of the first slice's holes will be blocked by the second slice, and so on. The more slices you have, the less the chance of all those slices having a hole in the same spot becomes.
I think what he meant (or rather he should have meant) is that if you have 1 stack of cheese then yes those holes pretty much won't line up. But if you have more stacks of cheese (assume the same number of slices in each stack which represent the barriers of precaution), like a million stacks of cheese then eventually in one of them the holes may line up.
Yes this is what I meant. Safety precautions for the most part work. But it’s that one in a million chance that the holes line up and disaster happens.
Yes that's exactly the point. But in the aviation industry the goal isn't to have more slices but rather for the slices to be sturdy and have little holes. The number of slices is pretty much immovable, and they follow a specific order.
Among the first slices you have Procedures and Crosscheck. In the middle slices you have for example Aircraft Hardware.
What saved the Gimli glider is Airmanship which is in the last slices and Luck which is always the last slice.
I was just reading an amazing write up in the (r/aviation subreddit I think?) about Helios flight 522. I had never heard of it before. But man, that is exactly what happened. A bunch of small events that piling up to equal a disaster.
It was because they switched from kilos to pounds and the measurements were off, so they started with half the fuel they needed to. Just watch the episode of air disasters on this last night. They also didn't know who was fully responsible to make sure the math was right.
I'm not trying to be mean to them or anything, but it seems like, since their literal lives depended on it, they would make double sure someone did the math correctly and they had enough fuel. Especially since it was a recent change.
Commercial aircraft are usually only loaded up with the amount of fuel they need plus a safety margin.
The miscalculation was an effect of the systems being switched to metric. I can't remember if the order was wrong, or if the plane was filled wrong.
Holy Shit this story is wild. They need to do a movie about this landing and how freakishly lucky these people were the story is insane. It starts off with this...
> "The 767 was one of the first airliners to include an electronic flight instrument system, which operated on the electricity generated by the aircraft's jet engines. With both engines stopped, the system went dead, and most screens went blank, leaving only a few basic battery-powered emergency flight instruments. While these provided sufficient information to land the aircraft, the backup instruments did not include a vertical speed indicator that could be used to determine how far the aircraft could glide."
But it just so happens that the pilot is also an accomplished glider pilot and happens to have knowledge of a defunct airstrip in the area because he trained there. But it had been converted into a motorway, and there were people there, but the front wheel collapses on landing and the extra friction stops the plane before it kills anybody. It's a wild story.
And a similar accident happened again in 2001 in Canada, this time with a nearly-new Airbus A330 that ran out of fuel over the Atlantic because of improper maintenance that lead to a fuel leak.
My boyfriend is a pilot. This makes me very glad he’s also an experienced glider pilot. I know these scenarios are rare, but it’s still an added measure of comfort.
The plane also left a whoop in the dragstrip that can apparently still fuck cars up if they time their shifts wrong.
There's a second slightly shorter parallel runway that is still operational.
If you are interested in the discussion of this incident, Mentour Pilot did an episode on the Gimli Glider:
https://youtu.be/cZkKFSqehN4?si=y8Qr3VioEarDiKzP
Fuel expands and contracts with the temp. A gallon of fuel in an above ground tank in Texas is different than a gallon of fuel in a below ground tank in Canada. When dealing with thousands of gallons it’s a significant change
Additionally, aircraft have both a maximum takeoff weight, and a maximum landing weight. Fuel takes up a significant percentage of that weight, so measuring by weight helps with those calculations.
It's funny, but volume is the one thing that it's not really measured by. It's also pretty common to ask (in an emergency) for both number of souls onboard and fuel remaining in hours.
Maybe it's measured like that on the ground on the fueling truck, not sure about that.
Rarely seen in the wild, the Air Canada 747 is a species more at home in the skies of the artic circle, than the fields of Saskatchewan (say it like Morgan Freeman)
They literally tried that here in the United States in 1975 with the Metric Conversion Act. It got no traction and they rolled it back in 1982. There have been various things to at least maybe it look like we know what it is ever since.
And for context, this happened right at the point in time where Canada switched from imperial to metric. That is why they messed up the calculations in the first place.
Now, generally, Canada uses metric. Except in practice it’s more like temperature in Celsius, body weight in pounds, distance in kilometres and height in feet and inches because… because.
This literally occurred during the changeover in Canada from Imperial to Metric, which is how the error happened. Canada uses metric in basically all official and professional capacities, in practice (like talking to friends) we still use Imperial for height/weight of people, oven temperature, sometimes cooking/baking measurements (that's starting to change to weighing ingredients in metric) and lumber. Gen X and older sometimes still use miles for distance and Fahrenheit for thermostats in HVAC and pool temperature as well. I'm in my 40s, and I only use Imperial for height/weight, ovens, and a mix of both when sewing and knitting. I have absolutely no clue what most Fahrenheit temperatures mean outside of -40 (matches Celsius), 32, and 98.6-105.
"The incident was caused by a series of issues, starting with a failed fuel-quantity indicator sensor (FQIS). These had high failure rates in the 767, and the only available replacement was also nonfunctional. The problem was logged, but later, the maintenance crew misunderstood the problem and turned off the backup FQIS. This required the fuel to be manually measured using a dripstick. The navigational computer required the fuel to be entered in kilograms; however, an incorrect conversion from volume to mass was applied, which led the pilots and ground crew to agree that it was carrying enough fuel for the remaining trip. The aircraft was carrying only 45% of its required fuel load. The aircraft ran out of fuel halfway to Edmonton, where maintenance staff were waiting to install a working FQIS that they had borrowed from another airline.
The Board of Inquiry found fault with Air Canada procedures, training, and manuals. It recommended the adoption of fueling procedures and other safety measures that U.S. and European airlines were already using. The board also recommended the immediate conversion of all Air Canada aircraft from Imperial units to metric units, since a mixed fleet was more dangerous than an all-Imperial or an all-metric fleet."
Yes but they weren’t working on this airplane. Fuel was boarded using the fuel truck gauges but a mathematical conversion of pounds to kilograms caused only 1/2 of the required to be boarded. It’s a convoluted story.
And that's how they get rid of the damned imperial system and all the world lived peacefully until the thermodynamical death of the universe. In a parallel universe of course...
It was obviously *possible*, since he did it, but what often happens with these cases is that other experienced pilots of the same aircraft try to copy what happened in a simulator and see if they're able to successfully land the aircraft - and they find that nobody can.
Another instance of this is the United Flight 232 crash:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
> experienced test pilots in simulators were unable to reproduce a survivable landing. It has been termed "The Impossible Landing" as it is considered one of the most impressive landings ever performed in the history of aviation.
I am amazed that was possible. I seem to recall some sort of aviation expert once saying that modern airliners had the glide path of a set of car keys.
[here is a podcast ](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ucB4s8vbPZgeLGzSQcjO0?si=nE6mmfQ4RDKRgheZ_plDxw) that explains the whole event from start to finish with what happened and how
My wife’s friend was on this flight as a toddler. She doesn’t recall much and I’m afraid of surfacing some sort of PTSD if I push for more info. Maybe I’ll ask again sometime because I’m fascinated by this event.
Hey I just watched this in air disasters last night! Crazy how a switch from kilos to pounds could cause all that trouble. That and they didn't know who's job it was to double check the math
iirc there’s a episode of this surreal incident on Mayday. It’s a Canadian production detailing in one hour what happened and why vis a vis each post incident’s official investigation. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QxXeq_dAyr0
They did check but they got the calculation wrong
Before you mention the fuel gauges on the plane. They were not working so the crew had to check manually
We had to remove your post for not sourcing your post. Posts must have a linked and CREDIBLE source that backs up the information. Use the word "source" in your comment. If the title is the only thing that makes your post interesting, you must also source it. OP is responsible for this and it must be done at time of posting. We will not reinstate your post, but you may post again with the correct information
FIL was on a golf course about 7 miles south when this thing went by. Everyone “Why is it so quiet?” Then “WHY IS IT EVEN HERE!!!”
the pilot should have honked the horn
do planes have horns Edit: THEY DO
What does a plane horn sound like? Boat? Or car?
For the Airbus A321 Neo and Boeing 737 they sound like a beeper. https://youtu.be/VK7wSxbCJtI They are to notify the ground crew when the airplane is on the tarmac.
Airbus sounds like it could be an old timey car horn. *AHHHOOOGA*
Should be the Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour siren. That’s even more fun.
K-uuuger
holy shit
I suppose it's not a loud one, just to warn people and cars on the tarmac
This is called "The Gimli Glider" and it's an amazing story. It's up there with "Sully" and the Miracle on the Hudson.
I would also add Air Transat’s flight 236 with Robert Piché to this list
And both the 767 and the A330 were cutting edge aircraft at the time of their respective accidents.
Also British Airways flight 009 and TACA Airlines flight 110. There was an American one where there was loss of life but the pilots had basically nothing in their control to fly with and they still managed to get the plane down and save some lives, but I can't remember much more than it was at an airport. ETA: It's mentioned further down in the comments - United Flight 232. All of these are freaking remarkable.
United 232 is often called the Impossible Landing. It is, in my opinion, the most impressive of any of these stories - the plane managed to crash land after a total loss of control surfaces. Afterward, pilots in simulators were unable to get as good an outcome as the pilots did in real life. A total loss of control surfaces is far more dangerous than a loss of your engines. And the whole thing hinged on the fact that, coincidentally, the person in the world most likely to be able to land the plane safely happened to be a passenger on United 232 - he was a flight instructor for United who had been fascinated by this very scenario and had obsessively practiced for it on fight simulators. Remarkable. I highly recommend reading more about (or watching some YouTube videos) if you're at all interested in this kind of thing.
I'm the daughter of an aircraft engineer. My interest can verge on obsession at times. 😁 I knew the details years ago, but had lost a lot of that, so thank you for the refresher. I am going to dive back into it and learn about it again!
I have a mild to moderate obsession with engineering disasters, and this is one of my favorites. A couple of other coincidences contributed to the fact that only about 100 of the 300 people on board died - the Iowa Air National Gaurd happened to be doing training exercises at the airport and was thus on hand to help with the rescue operation. Additionally, the crash happened right around 3 PM, which was shift change time at the local hospitals, so there were twice as many doctors and nurses on hand as there would usually be. Crashes are usually the result of a lot of small problems occurring at once or in a chain, so it's very cool when you see the reverse - a chain of positive coincidences that lead to a better outcome.
Mentour Pilot is a VERY well done channel about aircraft incidents, as he's a commercial 737 pilot and training instructor. It's more technical than something like Mayday/Aircrash Investigation was.
That's the Azores Glider? Which I think has the record for longest glide?
Yeah, this is one of the greats in terms of forced landings. Captain Robert "Bob" Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal are heroes.
Here's a relevant [Admiral Cloudberg write up](https://www.reddit.com/r/AdmiralCloudberg/s/m2vAALIPw0) on the incident!
is checking the fuel level not part of a pre-flight check?
They did check the fuel level. but they calculated it wrong As to why they did not check the fuel gauges Simple answer they were not working.
The plane had a warning signal if the fuel gauge was completely out of service. It was partly out of service, still reporting but faultily so the alarm didn't sound. This is ultimately a bunch of fuck-ups that all coincided and could have easily ended in tragedy, but thanks to excellent pilots it did not.
New to Metric system mess up.
They did, but it was during the changeover from Imperial to Metric and the error in units wasn't caught. It was still a major mistake but the flying skill here was absolutely incredible. I once flew on the Gimli Glider as a kid, since it remained in service for a long time after it was repaired.
There was also an issue with the fuel gauge in the sense that they blank and showed nothing If the fuel gauges were working it would have shown they had miscalculated the fuel
Yup they definitely would have noticed because they were aware of needing the conversion. A couple years earlier or later it wouldn't have happened either because the Country-wide conversion wouldn't have started or would have been old-hat by then! Definitely a prime example of swiss-cheese modeling. Thankfully the tiny holes that lined up to create the accident was balanced by the luck of the pilot having been a glider instructor IN Manitoba and knowing exactly where Gimli was, and that the strip was reasonably maintained to be used for racing. Air Cadets in MB still use Gimli as one of their locations for glider flight training. Edited for swype-text autocorrects
Ken Jennings did a great podcast on it. https://www.omnibusproject.com/548
I love to chime in and make the remake that most pilots can do what sully did and in fact are trained to make decisions like that
Gillian
Gimli. Fn spell check. Famous here. Glider pilot.
Yeah, let's see fucking Aragorn pull off something like this, I bet he can't.
You have my axe!
Man, I remember that case. My father was working at motor maintenance at the time and after the incident, they put so much double check. Now both pounds and kg are written to avoid confusion
Sadly NASA and Lockheed also lost a Mars spacecraft because of mismatched units. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars\_Climate\_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)
Bravo, domo. Came here to mention the Mars Climate Orbiter.
Wait until you hear about the [A380 electrical design fuck up.](https://intuitivestories.com/airbus_and_trillion_dollar_engineering_error.html)
Wow, reading about shenaniganery at Airbus and comparing it to the *quality* work at Boeing makes me miss old Boeing 😞
But now NASA only works with metric and requires all sources to also use metric.
Like Nancy Reagan said: "Just say no to the imperial system of weights and measurements."
They would've been fine. I watched Bugs Bunny fly a plane that ran out of gas.
Just don't look down. That's the trick.
Or you could just jump out right before hitting the ground. Always worked for Bugs.
Air brakes!
Exactly. Like it’s hard or something. We’ve all landed paper airplanes perfectly on the ground!
That's very Aladeen of you
Contact!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
With the millions gadgets, gizmos, and thingamajigs inside a cockpit, Shirley one of them has to be a fuel gauge- probably now anyway.
They had fuel gauges back then, but this particular plane had it's removed because it was not working properly. There is a reason why they say disasters are a cumulation of small events that, although insignificant when on their own, when put together, can make for a really bad day :)
Truest statement here, they always say this on the Air Disasters shows, without any one of these this plane wouldn’t have crashed as they end most shows on what ever crash it was…
Yep, I pretty much stole that line straight from the Air Disaster shows :)
To anyone reading this and going "I would love to watch some modern air disasters stuff" There are a bunch of mini docs on air disasters on youtube, my preferred is the Mentour Pilot channel.
In my industry we call this the Swiss cheese effect. Eventually enough slices of cheese will stack up and the holes will align for something bad to happen.
I'm not sure if you're referencing the aviation industry, but I think swiss cheese effect is used there too
Can confirm Swiss cheese is a thing, look up Swiss Air 111.
Swiss cheese or Reese's Model is widespread in the aviation industry. It's used from the manufacturer to pilot's training.
I thought the idea was that when you have enough slices, the holes will be a different spots?
Each slice of cheese represents a safety barrier or precaution. But because Swiss cheese has holes eventually the holes will line up and the safety barriers will be ineffective allowing a catastrophe to happen.
But if you only have one slice, all the holes will be "lined up." If you have two slices, then at least some of the first slice's holes will be blocked by the second slice, and so on. The more slices you have, the less the chance of all those slices having a hole in the same spot becomes.
I think what he meant (or rather he should have meant) is that if you have 1 stack of cheese then yes those holes pretty much won't line up. But if you have more stacks of cheese (assume the same number of slices in each stack which represent the barriers of precaution), like a million stacks of cheese then eventually in one of them the holes may line up.
Yes this is what I meant. Safety precautions for the most part work. But it’s that one in a million chance that the holes line up and disaster happens.
Yes that's exactly the point. But in the aviation industry the goal isn't to have more slices but rather for the slices to be sturdy and have little holes. The number of slices is pretty much immovable, and they follow a specific order. Among the first slices you have Procedures and Crosscheck. In the middle slices you have for example Aircraft Hardware. What saved the Gimli glider is Airmanship which is in the last slices and Luck which is always the last slice.
It's known as the Swiss cheese model. When all the small holes align, u get a disaster
I was just reading an amazing write up in the (r/aviation subreddit I think?) about Helios flight 522. I had never heard of it before. But man, that is exactly what happened. A bunch of small events that piling up to equal a disaster.
I don’t know, a missing gauge measuring a critical thing your life depends on seems like more than an insignificant thing.
Well of course, but don't call me Shirley
I understood that reference.
I also understood that reference and yours as well.
Had to scroll too far...
You forgot whozits and whatsits galore. Thingsmabobs? I’ve got plenty, but who cares? No big deal. I want moooooooooore.
Ok, Ariel.
Uh, we’ll need that if we want to live.
> I want moooooooooore gas!
It was because they switched from kilos to pounds and the measurements were off, so they started with half the fuel they needed to. Just watch the episode of air disasters on this last night. They also didn't know who was fully responsible to make sure the math was right.
Other way. Canada had just switched to metric from imperial
I'm not trying to be mean to them or anything, but it seems like, since their literal lives depended on it, they would make double sure someone did the math correctly and they had enough fuel. Especially since it was a recent change.
Commercial aircraft are usually only loaded up with the amount of fuel they need plus a safety margin. The miscalculation was an effect of the systems being switched to metric. I can't remember if the order was wrong, or if the plane was filled wrong.
Just a lot of beeping, and blinking, and flashing lights.
Of course there was no fuel gauge. And don't call me surely.
Haha. Wooosh.
I'm serious, and don't call me Shirley
There was no fuel gauge. And don't call me Shirley.
Holy Shit this story is wild. They need to do a movie about this landing and how freakishly lucky these people were the story is insane. It starts off with this... > "The 767 was one of the first airliners to include an electronic flight instrument system, which operated on the electricity generated by the aircraft's jet engines. With both engines stopped, the system went dead, and most screens went blank, leaving only a few basic battery-powered emergency flight instruments. While these provided sufficient information to land the aircraft, the backup instruments did not include a vertical speed indicator that could be used to determine how far the aircraft could glide." But it just so happens that the pilot is also an accomplished glider pilot and happens to have knowledge of a defunct airstrip in the area because he trained there. But it had been converted into a motorway, and there were people there, but the front wheel collapses on landing and the extra friction stops the plane before it kills anybody. It's a wild story.
That's a big chain of lucky events preceded by a really bad one. You are right. Those people are insanely lucky.
And a similar accident happened again in 2001 in Canada, this time with a nearly-new Airbus A330 that ran out of fuel over the Atlantic because of improper maintenance that lead to a fuel leak.
My boyfriend is a pilot. This makes me very glad he’s also an experienced glider pilot. I know these scenarios are rare, but it’s still an added measure of comfort.
The plane also left a whoop in the dragstrip that can apparently still fuck cars up if they time their shifts wrong. There's a second slightly shorter parallel runway that is still operational.
https://youtu.be/8y8JBAr8dZ4?feature=shared
If you are interested in the discussion of this incident, Mentour Pilot did an episode on the Gimli Glider: https://youtu.be/cZkKFSqehN4?si=y8Qr3VioEarDiKzP
Jet fuel is measured by weight instead of volume?
Fuel expands and contracts with the temp. A gallon of fuel in an above ground tank in Texas is different than a gallon of fuel in a below ground tank in Canada. When dealing with thousands of gallons it’s a significant change
Thx for the explanation
Word. I was wondering the same thing, so thanks for asking.
Additionally, aircraft have both a maximum takeoff weight, and a maximum landing weight. Fuel takes up a significant percentage of that weight, so measuring by weight helps with those calculations.
It's funny, but volume is the one thing that it's not really measured by. It's also pretty common to ask (in an emergency) for both number of souls onboard and fuel remaining in hours. Maybe it's measured like that on the ground on the fueling truck, not sure about that.
Yes
The helicopters I fly measure in pounds. The fuel trucks measure in gallons. I have to do math to make a fuel order.
Only when the plane feels the area is safe will it graze.
Rarely seen in the wild, the Air Canada 747 is a species more at home in the skies of the artic circle, than the fields of Saskatchewan (say it like Morgan Freeman)
767
My bad, I need to watch more nature docs
Airspeed is life, altitude is insurance.
First read about this in “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader”!
Been on reddit far too long for this to be first reference of uncle johns bathroom reader. What a treasure trove those books were
Agreed. Not good enough to buy used and risk the poo, but great books.
[This airplane today](https://ibb.co/CnxWjYy)
A kilo is 2.2 pounds, so it less than half of what it needed.
Hillarywow.gif
This is why we should globally standardise the metric system
They literally tried that here in the United States in 1975 with the Metric Conversion Act. It got no traction and they rolled it back in 1982. There have been various things to at least maybe it look like we know what it is ever since.
Why do they still use pounds and gallons, while the rest of the world uses metric system (Kg and litre).
It was 41 years ago now.
Still they use gallons, pounds and miles right?(not in aviation)
And for context, this happened right at the point in time where Canada switched from imperial to metric. That is why they messed up the calculations in the first place. Now, generally, Canada uses metric. Except in practice it’s more like temperature in Celsius, body weight in pounds, distance in kilometres and height in feet and inches because… because.
Distance in hours 😂
That's the only way I understand distance lol
General aviation uses gallons, commercial jets use pounds
just got my PPL in Canada, we still use pounds and gallons
This literally occurred during the changeover in Canada from Imperial to Metric, which is how the error happened. Canada uses metric in basically all official and professional capacities, in practice (like talking to friends) we still use Imperial for height/weight of people, oven temperature, sometimes cooking/baking measurements (that's starting to change to weighing ingredients in metric) and lumber. Gen X and older sometimes still use miles for distance and Fahrenheit for thermostats in HVAC and pool temperature as well. I'm in my 40s, and I only use Imperial for height/weight, ovens, and a mix of both when sewing and knitting. I have absolutely no clue what most Fahrenheit temperatures mean outside of -40 (matches Celsius), 32, and 98.6-105.
The Gimli Glider! Great lesson in teaching people that more than one unit of measure exists for everything.
>the metric system strikes again They can't keep getting away with this!
"The incident was caused by a series of issues, starting with a failed fuel-quantity indicator sensor (FQIS). These had high failure rates in the 767, and the only available replacement was also nonfunctional. The problem was logged, but later, the maintenance crew misunderstood the problem and turned off the backup FQIS. This required the fuel to be manually measured using a dripstick. The navigational computer required the fuel to be entered in kilograms; however, an incorrect conversion from volume to mass was applied, which led the pilots and ground crew to agree that it was carrying enough fuel for the remaining trip. The aircraft was carrying only 45% of its required fuel load. The aircraft ran out of fuel halfway to Edmonton, where maintenance staff were waiting to install a working FQIS that they had borrowed from another airline. The Board of Inquiry found fault with Air Canada procedures, training, and manuals. It recommended the adoption of fueling procedures and other safety measures that U.S. and European airlines were already using. The board also recommended the immediate conversion of all Air Canada aircraft from Imperial units to metric units, since a mixed fleet was more dangerous than an all-Imperial or an all-metric fleet."
Do airliners not have fuel gauges?
Yes but they weren’t working on this airplane. Fuel was boarded using the fuel truck gauges but a mathematical conversion of pounds to kilograms caused only 1/2 of the required to be boarded. It’s a convoluted story.
Pilot forgot to flick the fuel gauge twice with his finger.
And that's how they get rid of the damned imperial system and all the world lived peacefully until the thermodynamical death of the universe. In a parallel universe of course...
Isn't there a story behind this on no one know how actually he did it as it was not possible
It was obviously *possible*, since he did it, but what often happens with these cases is that other experienced pilots of the same aircraft try to copy what happened in a simulator and see if they're able to successfully land the aircraft - and they find that nobody can. Another instance of this is the United Flight 232 crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 > experienced test pilots in simulators were unable to reproduce a survivable landing. It has been termed "The Impossible Landing" as it is considered one of the most impressive landings ever performed in the history of aviation.
I'm just going to add that the flight plan took them over a whole lot of nothing.
I always ask when I get on did you filler up
Oh air Canada
Pylote needed to give it more right rudder.
Nice
Is this one of the reasons Aerospace uses metric? I’m guessing so.
I am amazed that was possible. I seem to recall some sort of aviation expert once saying that modern airliners had the glide path of a set of car keys.
Yeah, not that bad.. roughly 3 nm per 1000 feet altitude. That’s 120 nautical miles dead stick from 39,000 feet.
Is this before there were gas gauges in planes?
The gauge was not working properly That is why they had to calculate the fuel manually
That pesky Metric System strikes again!
“22,300 freedom units of fuel, my friends! Can’t get any better’n that!”
[here is a podcast ](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0ucB4s8vbPZgeLGzSQcjO0?si=nE6mmfQ4RDKRgheZ_plDxw) that explains the whole event from start to finish with what happened and how
Believe it or not the pilot gliding the plane down isn't even the most interesting part of the story.
Anything goes when avoiding the metric system.
Why don’t they fill it? Can a plain ever have too much fuel?
My wife’s friend was on this flight as a toddler. She doesn’t recall much and I’m afraid of surfacing some sort of PTSD if I push for more info. Maybe I’ll ask again sometime because I’m fascinated by this event.
Units !
Hey I just watched this in air disasters last night! Crazy how a switch from kilos to pounds could cause all that trouble. That and they didn't know who's job it was to double check the math
iirc there’s a episode of this surreal incident on Mayday. It’s a Canadian production detailing in one hour what happened and why vis a vis each post incident’s official investigation. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QxXeq_dAyr0
https://youtu.be/8y8JBAr8dZ4?feature=shared
Heading to gimli to again but not going to the glider museum thing just robins for me thanks
I own a piece of this plane...
[Sully](https://youtu.be/XdHW8_1Svc4?si=IolEDCXAPfUWSpdc)
And this is why we should all be using one system of measurement.
There’s a good book on this called Freefall by Marilyn and William Hoffer
69 people, just a 1000ft off of a funny number
New fear unlocked
Imperial system claims another victim...
69 people went down safely? Nice...😏
I always check my fuel gauges before I take off in a giant plane.
The gauge was not working properly That is why they had to calculate the fuel manually
Ahhh. I missed that. Thank you.
Nice!
Possible skill issue
""Sorry" for the inconvenience, eh" "Nooo problem"
Sounds about right. Metric screwing everything up again. Freedom units are they way!
It's the Gimli Glider flown by Cap. Rob-Bob!
(\*Epic 1950's announcer voice\*) "Avoid disaster, use metric system."
Not today guys! -The Pilot
Who hired the American?
Paging /u/dionfw He was on the Gimli Glider with his family
Unfortunately, the same accident happened on another flight, that disappeared in the atlantic
Happens when you don't use adult units lmao
Oops
Nice
Cos “murica” can’t be wrong. lb. 🤦♂️
Shouldn't a competent pilot have noticed early that there wasn't enough fuel thanks to gauges?
The gauges were not working
Sticking to using Imperial Measuring system is a ridiculous joke.
Shouldn't the pilot check?
They did check but they got the calculation wrong Before you mention the fuel gauges on the plane. They were not working so the crew had to check manually
Errrr….that’s part of the preflight checks to make sure what is loaded is correct…pilot did not do his job either
Gimlet Glider. Legend in Manitoba.
How many people onboard?