They confused kilograms for pounds, and ran out of fuel mid-flight!

10 May 2026 · 1 min

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1:18

In this narrated YouTube video, Dan Novaes recounts the 1983 Air Canada Flight 143 incident, where a Boeing 767 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet due to a unit‑conversion error—fuel was loaded in kilograms but the crew calculated using pounds, leaving the aircraft with less than half the required fuel. As both engines failed, the plane became a powerless glider with over 60 passengers. Captain Bob Pearson, who had glider experience, treated the aircraft as a glider, steering it toward the nearest landing site: the abandoned Gimli airbase, which was being used as a racetrack that day. The crew performed a sideslip maneuver to lose altitude quickly, landing hard with a collapsed nose gear but without any fatalities. The story highlights the critical impact of metric conversion mistakes, the value of specialized training, and the dramatic circumstances of the emergency landing, now famously known as the Gimli Glider.

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In 1983, a commercial airplane ran out of fuel in the middle of flight. This was Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767, halfway between Montreal and Edmonton at 41,000 feet. Then alarms started going off— fuel pressure, engine warnings. Within minutes, the first engine failed, then the second. Total power loss. No engines, no electricity, almost no instruments. The aircraft became a glider with over 60 people on board. The cause? A simple but critical mistake. Canada had just switched to the metric system. Fuel was calculated in kilograms, but the crew used pounds. They loaded less than half the required fuel and didn't know it. Now they had seconds to act. Captain Bob Pearson took control. He had glider experience. That changed everything. Instead of panicking, he treated the aircraft like a glider. He aimed for the nearest possible landing site, an abandoned airbase in Gimli. But there was a problem. It was being used as a racetrack that day. People were on the ground. The plane descended silently. No engine noise, just wind. At the last moment, they performed a maneuver called a sideslip to lose altitude quickly, then landed hard but controlled. The nose gear collapsed. The aircraft skidded to a stop. No fatalities. Everyone survived. It became known as the Gimli Glider, a case where training and one small unit conversion error almost led to disaster.