Boeing 767 fuel starvation on flight 174 - movie

[beet1e]

I'm selling two TV sets and getting a 32" wide screen TV. I have an old 14" which I'm selling on Ebay - click here if you want to buy it - only £15.

Anyhow, I brought it downstairs to test, and happened upon a movie about a B767 that got into trouble over Canada. At first I thought "yeah, yeah - same old same old disaster movie clichés"... but a quick look at IMDB showed that it was a true story. Synopsis: A balls up was made when fuelling the aircraft. The aircraft needed X kilograms of fuel for the flight, but there was a mixup on the units, and only X pounds was loaded, so the plane had less than half the fuel it should have had.

There was the usual dramatisation/fake crying etc., but it turned out to be quite a good movie. William Devane was the Captain.

I can well imagine how this balls up could have occurred in Canada, which is a metric country, I believe - with distances and car odometers in kilometres, but whose southern neighbour has hardly any metrication at all.

They ended up landing at a disused field called Gimley (sp) - near Winnipeg - not enough fuel to get to Winnipeg.

It's worrying to think they could get so far into the flight before realising that they had only half the fuel they should have had. I bet this mistake would not have got past our Mr. Toad.

[Pongo]

We will have to buy Airbuses..they are canuck proof.

[Staga]

Use Google for "Gimli Glider"

[ra]

Don't these new fangled planes have fuel guages?

[Staga]

Read the story.

Edit:

light 143's problems began on the ground in Montreal. A computer known as the Fuel Quantity Information System Processor manages the entire 767 fuel loading process. The FQIS controls the fuel pumps and drives all of the 767's fuel gauges. Little is left for crew and refuelers to do but hook up the hoses and dial in the desired fuel load. But the FQIS was not working properly on Flight 143. The fault was later discovered to be a poorly soldered sensor. An improbable sequence of circuit-breaking mistakes made by an Air Canada technician independently investigating the problem defeated several layers of redundancy built into the system. This left Aircraft #604 without working fuel gauges.

http://www.wadenelson.com/gimli.html

[midnight Target]

For a 'made for TV' movie it is pretty good. There is a little blurb at the end that says they patched the exact same scenario into the simulators after this flight and 19 out of 20 (I forget the actual numbers) crashed the plane.

[FUNKED1]

Originally posted by Pongo
We will have to buy Airbuses..they are canuck proof.

You'd think so, but in August 2001 an Air Transat A330 (Canadian carrier and crew) had to dead stick on a strip in the Azores after a ground crew error caused a fuel leak which was then mismanaged by the flight crew, resulting in fuel exhaustion.
DETH TO CANREEKA!!!

[Toad]

That crew did a marvelous job.

Every airline has different fuel loading/verification and just about every one thought theirs was "foolproof".

Then this happened and I think just about every airline "revised" their "foolproof" fuel loading/verification procedures.  

[rpm]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
You'd think so, but in August 2001 an Air Transat A330 (Canadian carrier and crew) had to dead stick on a strip in the Azores after a ground crew error caused a fuel leak which was then mismanaged by the flight crew, resulting in fuel exhaustion.
DETH TO CANREEKA!!!

The Air Transat flight crew now holds the world's distance record for gliding an airliner, altho they made several errors. The flight  should have diverted much earlier but the Captain refused to believe his instruments. They made it to the Azores by the skin of their teeth.

I saw the movie about Flight 143. Not bad for a Canadian TV movie. Whoever the engineer was that designed the ramair turbine backup system deserves many kudos!

[Pongo]

From now one Im taking all my flights out of Seattle.

[FUNKED1]

Originally posted by rpm371
I saw the movie about Flight 143. Not bad for a Canadian TV movie. Whoever the engineer was that designed the ramair turbine backup system deserves many kudos!

I used to work in the plant that made those turbines (RATs) among other things.  Needless to say, the engineers & union guys get a lot of job satisfaction every time their units save a few hundred lives.

[straffo]

I'm a glider pilot can I pretend to a job at  Air Transat ?

or do I need more qualification

[Habu]

I was on an Air Canada flight a couple of years ago and the cabin attendent said the captian was one of their best pilots. He was the guy that landed that plane.

The old airport was being used as a drag strip and they had to land it on a very small area to avoid all sorts of things that were built in and around the strip. Very tricky landing even with engines. I think the nose gear did not lock down so the plane skidded in on its nose.

After fixing some damaged skin it was good to go again and I think they flew it out with a minimal fuel load and skeleton crew.

[Torque]

Originally posted by FUNKED1
You'd think so, but in August 2001 an Air Transat A330 (Canadian carrier and crew) had to dead stick on a strip in the Azores after a ground crew error caused a fuel leak which was then mismanaged by the flight crew, resulting in fuel exhaustion.
DETH TO CANREEKA!!!

Gliding in the dark for 30 minute while dropping from 30,000 feet and he nailed the landing like this.



Not bad for a Frenchmen eh Funkster.

[beet1e]

Originally posted by Toad
That crew did a marvelous job.

Every airline has different fuel loading/verification and just about every one thought theirs was "foolproof".

Then this happened and I think just about every airline "revised" their "foolproof" fuel loading/verification procedures.  

Hmmmph... I appreciate what you say, and that a fuel loading mistake might occur, but how could the pilots miss it until well into the flight?