Flights Gone Wrong

Real stories. Deeper understanding.

Air Canada Flight 143

July 23, 1983Gimli, Manitoba, Canada (fuel ran out over Red Lake, Ontario)

On 23 July 1983 an almost new Air Canada Boeing 767 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet over northern Ontario, after its fuel load was worked out in pounds instead of kilograms. Captain Robert Pearson glided it to a landing on the disused air force runway at Gimli, Manitoba, and all 69 people on board survived.

The sequence of events

All times Central Daylight Time (CDT)

  1. Shortly after 20:00 CDT

    A fuel pressure warning

    Over Red Lake, Ontario, a low fuel pressure warning came on for the left fuel pump. Captain Pearson decided to divert to Winnipeg, then 120 miles away, and started down from 41,000 feet.

    Watch the video

  2. Minutes laterapproximately

    Both engines stop

    The left engine failed and then the right. The aircraft was at 35,000 feet, 65 miles from Winnipeg and 45 miles from Gimli, and the electronic cockpit displays went blank.

    Watch the video

  3. 20:32 CDT

    A turn for Gimli

    First Officer Maurice Quintal calculated that they could not reach Winnipeg. In consultation with air traffic control, Pearson turned for Gimli, a disused military base about 12 miles away.

    Watch the video

  4. 20:38 CDTapproximately

    A sideslip onto the runway

    Too high on final approach, Pearson used a sideslip, a glider technique, to lose height without gaining speed. He touched down within 800 feet of the start of the 7,200-foot runway.

    Watch the video

  5. 20:38 CDTapproximately

    The aircraft stops short of the crowd

    The nose gear, which had not locked, collapsed, and the nose scraping on the concrete helped slow the aircraft. It stopped before reaching the people at the drag-racing strip at the far end, and everyone was evacuated, with only minor injuries.

    Watch the video
Play video: Air Canada Flight 143: Pearson’s Sideslip Landing at Gimli, 36:02

Photo: Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK / CC BY-SA 2.0

Key facts
AircraftBoeing 767
Aircraft variantBoeing 767-233, C-GAUN
Flight number143
People who died0
People on board69
Were there survivors?Yes
Phase of flightCruise

Related guides

  • Why Planes Run Out of Fuel: How Fuel Exhaustion Happens

    Airliners rarely run out of fuel, and when they do it is almost never one mistake: a wrong conversion factor, an undetected leak or a crew unable to act has to get past several checks. This guide explains how it happens, using the official findings on the Gimli Glider, Air Transat Flight 236 and Helios Airways Flight 522, and what changed afterwards.

  • The Swiss Cheese Model: Why Air Accidents Need Many Failures

    The Swiss cheese model, developed by psychologist James Reason, explains why an air accident almost never has a single cause: several layers of defence each have to fail, and their weak points have to line up. Two real accidents, the Gimli Glider and Helios Airways Flight 522, show how it works.

  • What Changed After Tenerife: CRM and Clearer Radio Calls

    The 1977 runway collision at Tenerife killed 583 people and turned on a few words of radio and a cockpit where no one stopped the captain.

Official finding · Board of Inquiry, Government of Canada (Justice George H. Lockwood), April 1985

The aircraft ran out of fuel because the fuel load was calculated in Montreal and again in Ottawa with a pounds-per-litre factor (1.77) instead of a kilograms-per-litre factor (about 0.8), after it was dispatched with blank fuel gauges contrary to the minimum equipment list; the Board also found corporate and equipment deficiencies at Air Canada.

View the report

Further reading

More coverage

Questions and answers

  1. Why did Air Canada Flight 143 run out of fuel?

    The fuel was measured by hand with a dripstick because the fuel gauges were not working. To turn litres into kilograms, the crew and mechanics used 1.77, which is the number of pounds in a litre of fuel. The aircraft left Montreal, and then Ottawa, with about half the fuel the crew thought it had.

  2. Why is it called the Gimli Glider?

    After both engines stopped, the 767 glided with no engine power to a landing at Gimli, a former air force base in Manitoba. The aircraft was repaired, went back into service and kept the nickname for the rest of its career.

  3. Was anyone hurt?

    No one was killed and there were no serious injuries. About ten people were slightly hurt during the evacuation, most of them on the steep rear slides, which did not reach the ground because the nose was down on the runway.

  4. What did the Board of Inquiry recommend?

    It recommended using one unit of measurement across the fleet, dripsticks that read directly in kilograms, independent checks of fuel loads, clear responsibility for fuel calculations, more spare fuel-gauge parts, and better metric training for crews and mechanics.

  5. What happened to the pilots?

    According to published accounts, Captain Pearson was demoted for six months and First Officer Quintal was suspended for two weeks, before both were reinstated. In 1985 they received the first FAI diploma for outstanding airmanship.

Sources: The facts and written text on this page come from the 3 videos on this page, by Mayday: Air Disaster, Flight Files.

Related events

Same cause: Fuel exhaustion

Same year: 1983