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I remember seeing an entertainingly bad TV movie of a very similar incident. I think it was this one, not the Gimli incident. But we learnt about the Gimli Gli

I remember seeing an entertainingly bad TV movie of a very similar incident. I think it was this one, not the Gimli incident. But we learnt about the Gimli Glider in my university computer risks course. It was a masterful piece of flying (and you'll note that most people who've tried to reproduce it in simulators fail). Sobering reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_required_gliding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_flights_that_r... There's a lot of flights there with casualties (including one in 2005 where a pressurisation failure caused the crew to pass out; the autopilot flew the plane to Greece where it entered a holding pattern until it ran out of fuel; interceptors spotted a flight attendant trying to land the plane with portable air equipment, but he didn't make it. No survivors). Airliners don't really glide well.

rpeden 10y ago
Many airliners glide quite well - they can glide quite a bit further from a given altitude than can general aviation aircraft that are (probably) more likely to run into a scenario where they'll need to glide. Air Transat 236 managed to glide 120km and land safely after running out of fuel. The Helios flight in 2005 was unfortunate. The flight attendant trying to control it had some pilot training, but not enough to handle an out-of-fuel airliner at relatively low altitude.