THE LAST TURKEY

Fascinating story about a Canadian aircraft which ran out of fuel mid-flight...

The Gimli Glider is the nickname of an Air Canada aircraft which was involved in an infamous aviation incident. On 23 July 1983, a Boeing 767-200 jet, Air Canada Flight 143, ran completely out of fuel at 41,000 feet (12,500 m) altitude, about halfway through its flight from Montreal to Edmonton. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at Gimli Industrial Park Airport, a former airbase at Gimli, Manitoba.

The First Officer proposed his former airforce base at Gimli as a landing site. Unknown to him, however, the base had become a dragstrip and had decommissioned one of its runways. As a result of the runway's conversion to use as a dragstrip, the runway now had two racing lanes separated by a guard rail running down the middle of it. Furthermore, a "Family Day" was underway at the dragstrip that particular day and the area around the decommissioned runway was covered with cars and campers. The decommissioned runway itself was being used to stage a race.