Gravity vs. The Gimli Glider

[TheMercenary]

This is a great story:

The Gimli Glider
Written by Alan Bellows on November 12th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

Holy shit."

Inside the cockpit of the cruising airliner, Captain Bob Pearson was understandably alarmed at the out-of-the-ordinary beeps that were chiming from his flight computer. On the control panel, an amber low fuel pressure warning lamp lit up to punctuate the audio alarm.

First Officer Maurice Quintal, copilot of Air Canada Flight 143, checked the indicator light to determine the cause of the computer's complaints. "Something's wrong with the fuel pump," he reported.

The mustachioed Captain Pearson pulled out the trusty Boeing handbook, his fingers dashing through the pages to find the specifics of the warning. To his relief, the troubleshooting chart indicated that the situation was not as perilous as it might seem: the fuel pump in the left wing tank was signaling a problem, a minor issue considering that gravity would continue to feed the engines even if the pump failed.

"You know," he commented to Copilot Quintal, "I would not take this air…" He trailed off as the computer blurted out another four beeps, and the indicator panel lit up like a Christmas tree decorated with bad news. "Oh fuck," Pearson lamented, "we've got to go to Winnipeg."

The date was 23 July 1983, and although the fuel pressure warnings were not the flight's first mechanical frustrations, they were certainly the most distressing so far. When pilots Pearson and Quintal had arrived for their shift earlier that day, they had been notified that the plane's fuel gauges were non-functional due to a fault in the Fuel Quantity Indicator System (FQIS). Even worse, the component required to repair it could not be delivered until later that evening.

continue
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=744#more-744

[Undertoad]

Around here Alan Bellows is known as Hot Pastrami.