On 3 Jan 2024, at 17:06, jimrobertson via <jimrobertson@...> wrote:

I mentioned that tale because it’s a truly AMAZING example of what can happen when written or electronic communications are imprecise or misunderstood. You don’t need to read beyond the first several paragraphs to be amazed by what went wrong and what (entirely capriciously) went right. The Air Canada 767 that plummeted (OK, glided, but I’ll bet no one on board enjoyed that 15% glide slope) from 41,000 feet was brand new and “state of the art,” but because ONE electronic fuel measuring instrument malfunctioned, calculations that involved using a dipstick (hilariously misspelled in the article as “dripstick”) to measure the fuel on board, then confusion among US gallons, imperial gallons, and metric units recording volume, or column height of fuel in the tanks, or some bizarre combination thereof led to a horrendous overestimate of the amount of fuel on board. A number of fortuitous factors saved potentially hundreds of lives that day, including:

1. The Air Canada Captain was a highly skilled glider pilot, and used those skills to control an enormous airplane during the 17 minutes it “flew” with no engine power (or electronic instruments that required engine-generated electricity, or manually movable aircraft control surfaces).
2. The no-longer-registered military airfield the crew used to land the 767 was familiar to a member of the flight crew who had used that airfield when in the RCAF.
3. The amateur drag-racing event happening on the airfield as the jumbo jet plopped down onto what was now a “drag” racing event was staffed by weekend recreationists who had safety training to put out fires on garage-modified race cars, but they leveraged those skills to douse flames on a machine capable of transporting hundreds of passengers.?
4. Some of the “missing feature” failures caused by the engine flameouts actually enabled the plane to stop on the shortened runway. For example, there was no electrical or hydraulic power to lock the nose wheel into the down position, and a “gravity drop” didn’t do so, so the plane skidded to a stop more quickly than it would have had the nose wheel locked in place.

When I was younger and more reckless, I sometimes pretended I was a racecar driver at amateur events held on famous California racetracks. Being prepared to handle a jumbo jet plummeting out of the sky onto the “back straight” of the racetrack was something I never, ever considered.

But you’re right; it’s not necessary to read beyond the first few paragraphs to get the essence of the story.

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?Not really mentioned in the article is that one thing contributing to the absence of mass death was that there were only 67 passengers on the plane. If this happened today, the plane would have been at least 95% full, weighing many many tons more and would probably have not made it to the field.