65: Gimli Glider

In 1983 a newly introduced 767 ran out of fuel mid-flight and the pilots were able to land completely dead-stick. Whilst 0.8kg/L and 1.77lbs/L represent the same density, when the wrong one was used in a refuelling calculation they came up well short. Why they were forced to manually calculate their fuel at all, was not nearly as controversial as the pilots decision to fly. We look at what went wrong and what went right in the incident of the Gimli Glider.