Gimli Glider to be retired

Nearly 25 years after the “Gimli Glider” made its famous emergency landing, without fuel, at Gimli Airport, MB (YGM) (Canada), Air Canada Boeing 767-233 C-GAUN / 604 (cn 22520/47) will be retired today and stored at the Mojave Airport in the California desert.

Original pilots Mr. Pearson and Mr. Quintal were on-board on a special flight this morning, departing from Montreal. Besides the two co-pilots, three of the six flight attendants also made the journey, which includes a stopover in Tucson, Ariz.

At least there is some hope that it wont be scraped – Aircraft maker Boeing Co., Mount Royal College in Calgary, engine maker Pratt & Whitney and the Canada Aviation Museum in Ottawa have expressed interest in acquiring the Gimli Glider.

There is a great article about the story of the “Gimli Glider” at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv…

You may also want to recap the accident at:
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19830723-0

You can track this flight #ACA7067 at FlightAware:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ACA7067

Some great pictures of departure from Montreal can be found at:
http://www.yulaviation.com/vbb/showpost.php?s=&p=95414&postcount=27

… and a video, unfortunately in French, can be watched at:
http://lcn.canoe.ca/cgi-bin/player/video.cgi?file=/lcn/actualite/national/20080124_landry.wmv

Related: Video of the Day – Goodbye Gimli Glider

2 thoughts on “Gimli Glider to be retired”

  1. As I was working for Air Canada’s direct competition at the time (CPAir) in YVR, we all had a good laugh at this event……..thankful that it wasn’t one of our’s, and that nobody had been hurt. We also cursed at the metric conversion crapola that we were all going through at the time.