The Gimli Glider Exhibit has purchased the cockpit of an iconic passenger airliner that its pilots turned into a glider and which subsequently became known as one of the greatest emergency landing feats in aviation history.
With the help of a generous area donor, the Gimli-based glider museum will be bringing the cockpit “home” this spring and its volunteers will restore it and display it near the Gimli Airport.
After the powerless Air Canada Boeing 767 passenger jet, nicknamed the Gimli Glider, was skillfully landed on a decommissioned military runway at the Gimli Airport in 1983, the plane was put back into service. It ended its operational life in 2008 and was sent to an airliner storage facility in the Mojave Desert in California, where it’s slowly being sold off in pieces.
Gimli Glider Exhibit president Barb Gluck said the museum paid for the plane’s cockpit and “it’s ours” after about nine months of negotiations with the Mojave Air and Space Port, north of Los Angeles, where the glider resides.
“It was strongly felt amongst many people who value the history of this plane that the cockpit had to be salvaged somehow because this is where the pilots handled those 21 minutes or so of falling from the sky and not knowing where they’d end up based on their rate of descent,” said Gluck. “Through the years, we’ve heard from people who said they were distressed we never brought the plane back. We’re a volunteer organization and couldn’t afford to pay $4.5 million for the plane, let alone pay to store it and paint it every five years. But we always said, ‘Let’s get the cockpit, let’s get the cockpit.’”
Gimli Glider pilots Capt. Robert Pearson and first officer Maurice Quintal saved the lives of all 61 passengers and eight crew on July 23, 1983, after the plane ran out of fuel en route from Montreal to Edmonton. Pearson was an experienced glider pilot and Quintal had been stationed at the Royal Canadian Air Force’s base in Gimli and was familiar with its runways.
Flight 143 took off from Montreal with only half the fuel required to complete the flight because of an imperial-metric miscalculation by ground crew. The plane ran out of gas over Red Lake, Ont., when it was at 41,000 feet and cruising at about 469 knots. The pilots determined the plane would not make it to Winnipeg and headed for Gimli, where Quintal was expecting to find an operational runway. He didn’t know the runway had been decommissioned and was being used by the Winnipeg Sports Car Club as a drag-racing strip.
Knowing he was approaching Gimli too quickly and at too high an altitude, Pearson executed a sideslip manoeuvre common in gliding and released the landing gear to create drag in order to slow the plane down. As the silent airliner descended on the runway, racing fans began to flee. No one was killed during the incident.
Gluck and other volunteer aviation enthusiasts launched the Gimli Glider Exhibit in 2017. Located in the Lakeview Resort near Gimli Harbour, the museum features a replica flight deck with a simulator that people can try out, nine original components from the plane such as the yoke and fuel panel, first-hand accounts of that fateful July day in 1983 and memorabilia donated by Capt. Pearson and others.
After Air Canada retired the jet in 2008, it was flown to the boneyard in the Mojave, and later attempts to sell the plane for $4.5 million failed.
“I was heartsick when I heard that they were selling off parts because I knew we’d never see her back here. Pieces of her would end up in casinos or restaurants or in the mancaves of people with wealth,” said Gluck. “That’s how our glider exhibit started; I had a phone call from a gentleman on the west coast that said pieces of the plane were being sold off. We started to negotiate for the cockpit back then, in 2015, when we started building the exhibit, but the price was exorbitant, never mind the shipping cost. If I remember correctly, each of the cockpit windows had a price point of $40,000 each because of the six layers of special protective glass.”
The cockpit ended up costing the exhibit about $14,000 U.S. A generous area donor – who was hesitant to be identified at the time of Gluck’s interview – offered to pay for half after he learned about the negotiations and after he made a $500 donation, said Gluck. Other donors also “gave large sums of money” to seal the deal.
“Now, we have to get her back to Gimli. She is also still attached to the fuselage,” said Gluck.
That means an experienced team will have to cut the cockpit from the body of the plane and load it on a special low-rise trailer as the cockpit “is so large that it can’t go through underpasses” on its journey back to Canada, which is expected to take place next spring.
“We have two retired aviation experts from Air Canada that have volunteered to bring her back. They’ll go down to California to get her,” said Gluck. “One of them is in the boneyard as we speak, sourcing where we can get replacement windows as the windows were sold [to other buyers]. He also knows what we’re going to need by way of a trailer and a truck to transport the cockpit. But we don’t want to bring her back until spring because we don’t want to risk anything on winter highways and bringing her through the mountains. We’ll bring it back when it’s safe.”
The journey home is expected to come with an exciting twist: Capt. Pearson himself, who let Gluck know he wants to accompany the cockpit to Gimli, she said.
Once the cockpit arrives in Gimli, it will be stored at a hangar in the Interlake that was offered to the museum and volunteers will get to work on restoring it and painting it, she said.
When the cockpit is ready for her debut, museum staff will have it installed on a pedestal in a commemorative park near the Gimli Airport that the Rural Municipality helped secure from the province, which owns the land.
“The cockpit needs to be raised in the air on a slight downward angle so it looks like it’s heading to the landing site. We’re working with different pedestal concept images for the final design,” said Gluck. “It will be painted in its original colours and around it will be two large signs that will have Capt. Pearson and Maurice Quintal’s photos on them, as well as another sign that will have a picture of the plane on the runway.”
The commemorative park will be available 24-7 to those who come to Gimli. The glider exhibit is run and staffed by volunteers and has limited hours, especially in the winter. It’s currently open on weekends, but will be closed in January and February 2025 when volunteers typically take holidays.
“About 80 per cent of the people that visit the exhibit ask where the plane landed and if they can go see it and take pictures,” said Gluck. “So, this commemorative park will fulfill that desire.”
Retired Air Canada pilot and Gimli councillor Andy Damm said Pearson and Quintal were faced with a number of decisions when the plane lost power in both its engines. They had to calculate glide ratio (how far the plane could fly), whether possible runways within that gliding distance were long enough and wide enough to accommodate the jet, whether there were fire and rescue services available.
“When Capt. Pearson and first officer Quintal lost power over Red Lake, they aimed for a straight line to Winnipeg. But they were just outside the glide ratio of the airplane; in other words, how far a plane can travel over the ground at the height it is,” said Damm. “If you can imagine having a plane the size of a 767 losing power, not all at once, and you’re trying to wrestle that plane and do calculations in your head, then get it safely to an airport – they pulled off quite a feat.”
Other than not being able to glide as far as Winnipeg, another one of the reasons Pearson and Quintal chose Gimli is the size of its runway.
“There isn’t a plane in the world you can’t put down on Gimli’s runway. That became their best choice,” said Damm.
Apart from “pure magic” as a reason for why a powerless airliner wouldn’t simply fall out of the sky, Damm said planes are essentially big gliders.
“If you look at the gliders air cadets use for training, you’ll see they have very long wings with a light body and have a very good glide ratio in which they can go for miles and miles and miles using thermals for lift. An airplane is basically the same. The only difference is airplanes have engines,” said Damm, who retired flying 787s that could carry 300 passengers. “Without power, a plane eventually does come crashing to the ground. but it will glide first; it doesn’t drop straight down like a stone.”
Having flown 767s, he estimates the size of the Gimli Glider’s cockpit – depending on where it’s cut along the fuselage – could be double the size of a semitrailer’s cab.
And he and council are happy to see it coming to Gimli.
“I think it’s fantastic that the Gimli Glider Exhibit procured the flight deck and that we’ll have this piece of aviation history displayed in a commemorative park outside the airport,” said Damm. “Council is proud to have been a part of this; the RM offered the land and is doing in-kind work for the preparation of the park. We also gave a small grant on top of that. This will be a boon to tourism in the area.”
After the emergency landing, Quintal and Pearson were temporarily suspended by Air Canada before being reinstated. They not only saved lives, but saved a brand-new airliner from destruction.
And a Canadian senator recently nominated Pearson for a King Charles III Coronation Medal, said Gluck.
The legacy of the pilots’ feat is lives on in people from around the world who come to Gimli to see the exhibit and meet Capt. Pearson at special events, including the 40th anniversary gala the museum held last year. Maurice Quintal passed away in 2015.
“The Gimli Glider is in the Top 3 – if not the Number 1 – story in emergency aviation events,” said Gluck. “We understand how people from around the world have come to see this story and they come to Gimli to see the exhibit. Some people have likened pieces of the plane we have to the Titanic. This [acquisition] will help get the plane’s history acknowledged in Canada; we’ve got the world coming through our door to see this.”
The Gimli Glider Exhibit welcomes donations to the cockpit restoration and installation project.
“Anybody who can contribute $100 or more will likely have their name listed around the cockpit. We’re thinking of installing plexiglass on which we can engrave donor names and put it right under the cockpit,” she said. “We have some restoration funds already in place and we’ll be applying for grants. We will also do a fundraising drive to have it installed on the pedestal.”
For more information about the glider exhibit or how to donate to the cockpit project, email gimligliderinfo@gmail.com
