#Freefall william hoffer series
#Freefall william hoffer simulator

They had no idea the airfield had been decommissioned. It should be within gliding range, and 48-year-old Captain Bob Pearson happened to be a particularly experienced glider pilot. This is when First Officer Quintal had a bright idea – Gimli had been his station when he had been a pilot in the RCAF. Almost all of the instruments in the cockpit, powered by electricity from the working jets, went blank, including the vertical speed indicator, which is supposed to tell you just what its name suggests. The sound for “all-engine failure.”Īt 40,000 feet, the pilots flipped through the checklist for instructions on this no-engine scenario.

#Freefall william hoffer simulator

Then a “bong” sound that none of the crew recognized, as it had never been demonstrated in flight simulator training.

#Freefall william hoffer series

The ordeal in the air began 17 minutes earlier over Red Lake, Ontario with a rapid series of events: fuel pressure alarms, a failed engine, a plan to divert to Winnipeg and make a one-engine landing. The pilot was so close he could see the boys’ terrified expressions.

Then silently, and with no warning, a Boeing 767 hurtled down to land. Two boys pedaled their bicycles at the end of the landing strip. A car race was taking place that day on part of the decommissioned runway, and people from Winnipeg had driven to Gimli, parking their campers by the side of the tarmac. On July 23, 1983, the Gimli airfield had long been converted from a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) station into a motorsport complex, complete with race course, go-kart track and drag strip. Home to only a couple of thousand souls, Gimli is known for two things: its annual Icelandic festival, which we will miss by just a couple of days, and the Gimli Glider. The name was chosen by the Icelandic immigrants who populate the community, borrowing the term from the Norse mythological golden-roofed building where the survivors of Ragnarok will live. We are on our way from Ottawa, Ontario to Regina, Saskatchewan, but our journey will be punctuated with an overnight stay in the village of Gimli, Manitoba. So a pilot always has to have a potential landing spot picked out in the fields and forests below, and then replace that spot with another as soon as it passes out of gliding range. Anything outside that circle would be too far for the single-engine Mooney to reach if all went suddenly silent. Through our headsets, my brother explains that the circle surrounding the plane on the map represents our gliding range.

The iPad on my brother’s lap shows our plane as an icon moving across the landscape.