The Gimli Glider is the nickname of the Air Canada

Air Canada

Air Canada is the flag carrier and largest airline of Canada. The airline, founded in 1936, provides scheduled and charter air transport for passengers and cargo to 178 destinations worldwide. It is the world's tenth largest passenger airline by number of destinations, and the airline is a...

 aircraft that was involved in a notable aviation incident

Aviation accidents and incidents

An aviation accident is defined in the Convention on International Civil Aviation Annex 13 as an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, in which a...

. On 23 July 1983, Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767-200 jet, ran out of fuel at an altitude of 41000 feet (12,496.8 m) ASL, about halfway through its flight from Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

 to Edmonton via Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

. The crew was able to glide

Gliding

Gliding is a recreational activity and competitive air sport in which pilots fly unpowered aircraft known as gliders or sailplanes using naturally occurring currents of rising air in the atmosphere to remain airborne. The word soaring is also used for the sport.Gliding as a sport began in the 1920s...

 the aircraft safely to an emergency landing

Emergency landing

An emergency landing is a landing made by an aircraft in response to a crisis which either interferes with the operation of the aircraft or involves sudden medical emergencies necessitating diversion to the nearest airport.-Types of emergency landings:...

 at Gimli Industrial Park Airport

Gimli Industrial Park Airport

Gimli Industrial Park Airport, , is a former military field located west of Gimli, Manitoba, Canada. The field is now operated as a civilian airport, with one of the original parallel runways decommissioned and now a significant portion of Gimli Motorsport Park...

, a former Canadian Air Force base at Gimli, Manitoba

Gimli, Manitoba

Gimli is a a rural municipality located in the Interlake region of south-central Manitoba, Canada, on the western shore of Lake Winnipeg. It is about north of the provincial capital Winnipeg...

.

The subsequent investigation revealed corporate failures and a chain of minor human errors

Human reliability

Human reliability is related to the field of human factors engineering and ergonomics, and refers to the reliability of humans in fields such as manufacturing, transportation, the military, or medicine...

 that combined to defeat built-in safeguards.