Mayday!

41,000 feet up in the skies over Canada, a chilling silence fell inside the cockpit of the Boeing 767.

Captain Robert Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal exchanged glances that spoke volumes, their faces ashen.

The unthinkable was happening….

Their plane, soaring high with 69 people on board, was out of fuel.

A little while earlier, as they were cruising over Red Lake in Ontario en route from Montreal to Edmonton, the aircraft’s cockpit warning system had sounded indicating a fuel-pressure problem on the left-hand engine.

Assuming it was nothing more serious than a failed fuel pump, the pilots had silenced the alarm, knowing that gravity would keep the engine supplied with fuel in level flight.

But then seconds later, the fuel pressure alarm had sounded again – this time for the right-hand engine.

Realising there was a bigger problem than they’d first thought, the pilots took the decision to divert to Winnipeg.

But before they’d even had a chance to plan their new route, the left engine died.

This was not good news, but it was by no means disastrous. A Boeing 767 is perfectly capable of being flown and landed with only one working engine.

And then….

BONG!

The cockpit warning system sounded again. Followed by….

SILENCE.

The fuel tanks were empty and both engines had now stopped.

With no time to ponder how they had managed to burn through all their fuel with over half the planned flight still remaining, Pearson and Quintal began discussing how they were going to get the plane safely on the ground

Quintal reached for the emergency checklist, looking for the section that covered how to fly the plane with both engines out – only to find that no such section existed.

This was now officially a bad day at the office for Quintal and Pearson.

But, contrary to what you may have seen in the movies, a plane with no working engines doesn’t just fall out of the sky.

As long as it is controlled correctly, it will glide along quite happily – albeit gradually losing altitude until it eventually reaches the ground.

So Pearson now found himself captaining what had become the world’s largest glider.

And this is where the passengers and crew of Air Canada Flight 143 encountered their first bit of good luck. Because, in his spare time, Captain Pearson was, in fact, an experienced glider pilot.

This meant he had a pretty good idea how to fly the 767 at the optimum speed and angle of attack to ensure it would have the maximum possible gliding range.

It was just a shame that, with no engines and hence no electrical power, there was no working airspeed indicator for him to use.

Nonetheless, Pearson did his best to guess his flying speed while Quintal ran the numbers to see if they had any hope of reaching Winnipeg.

And the numbers came back negative. There was no way they would make it to Winnipeg.

It was at this point that Quintal looked at the map and spotted the former Royal Canadian Air Force base at Gimli. He knew the place, having served there with the RCAF before becoming a commercial pilot.

And it was well within reach of the unpowered aircraft.

But they were far from home and dry. They still had to get the landing gear down without any electrical power and lose enough altitude (but not too much) to be able to land.

And there was one crucial detail about RCAF Station Gimli that neither pilot was aware of….

The way that Captain Pearson brought the plane in to land at Gimli was nothing short of heroic.

As they approached the runway, the pilots realised they were coming in too high and too fast. If they weren't careful, they’d run out of runway.

With no engines, there was no question of going around and attempting the approach again.

So Pearson executed a forward slip manoeuvre, pushing the yoke one way whilst applying rudder in the opposite direction.

It’s a technique which is commonly used in gliders and light aircraft to lose height quickly, but it’s not something you usually see done in a commercial airliner.

Pearson now had the plane perfectly lined up with the runway. The speed was good. The angle of descent was correct.

This was going to be ok.

And then he saw them. And his blood ran cold.

Two small boys on bikes, riding along the runway where Pearson’s huge glider was about to land.

It was so bizarre that the captain wondered at first if he was just hallucinating due to the stress of the past few moments.

Those two boys had no idea that a Boeing 767 was silently closing in on them.

But what on earth were they doing there, cycling up and down a runway?

Well, this is where that small extra detail about RCAF Gimli comes in….

You see, the airfield had been decommissioned years ago and, unbeknownst to Pearson and Quintal, it was now enjoying a new life as Gimli Motorsports Park.

Part of the runway had been repurposed as a drag race track and the rest of it was located in a car parking area where these two boys were playing on their bikes.

As the plane came in to land, it passed close enough to the boys that Pearson could see the look of sheer terror on their faces as they finally noticed the large plane bearing down on them.

They were saved by the fact that the plane’s nosewheel had not fully extended.

This meant that, when it landed, the plane’s nose slammed into the tarmac, forcing the plane to come to a stop just in time to avoid crushing the two boys.

(A bit of fencing that had been installed partway along the runway helped too).

The boys on the bikes were shocked but unharmed by the landing, as were all of the 69 passengers and crew on board the plane.

But with the plane now safely evacuated, one question still hung in the air….

How had a Boeing 767 run out of fuel halfway through its flight?

Well, the subsequent investigation found that it was due to a simple but near-fatal error when the aircraft was being refuelled prior to its takeoff from Montreal earlier that day.

At around this time in 1983, Air Canada was transitioning from measuring fuel in imperial units (pounds) to measuring it in metric kilogrammes.

A misunderstanding amongst the ground crew as to whether the amount of fuel requested by the pilots was in metric or imperial units had led to the aircraft only being supplied with 45% of the fuel that it actually required for the flight.

And now you’re probably wondering what marketing lesson I’m going to draw from this incredible story of the Gimli Glider.

Well, it’s this….

As a business owner or as a marketer, it’s vital that you always make sure you know your numbers.

Far too often, I speak to business owners – including accountants and bookkeepers who excel (pardon the pun) at sorting out their clients' figures – who have no idea about their own marketing numbers.

And that’s not good because….

You can't improve what you don’t measure.

So whether you’re posting on social media, advertising on Facebook, or running a Google Ads campaign, if you want to improve your results then it’s vitally important that you know what you’re spending (in terms of time and/or money) and how many leads it’s generating for you.

The simplest way to get that information is to use Google Analytics.

It’s completely free and it will give you all sorts of insights about how many people visit your website, where they come from (be it Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever), what pages they look at, whether they submit an enquiry form, etc etc.

But Analytics will only give you this information if you (a) install it on your website and (b) configure conversion tracking.

Assuming you have an enquiry form that redirects people to some kind of “thank you” page after they have submitted the form, then configuring conversion tracking is simply a matter of telling Google what the address of that “thank you” page is.

Now here’s something important to bear in mind….

Back in 2023, Google forced everyone to move over to a new version of Analytics (GA4) and the way you set up conversion tracking changed as a result. But many small business owners still haven't got to grips with the new interface or updated their conversion tracking.

So even if you can remember installing Analytics way back when you first launched your website, it’s worth checking to make sure it’s still working properly.

You can read step-by-step how to set up conversion tracking in GA4 in this article on Google’s support pages. But if you get stuck, reply to this email and I'll see if I can help you out with it.

And in the meantime, fly high, measure carefully, and always have a backup plan in mind!

Bye for now,
David.

PS – just as the story of the Gimli Glider reminds us to be ever-vigilant of our fuel levels, in the world of marketing, our "fuel" is the data we rely on.

Neglecting to monitor and understand it can mean the difference between a smooth landing and a missed runway.

So, as you navigate the vast skies of your business landscape, always keep an eye on your instruments. They might just guide you to your next big success story.

PPS – Kerry Seabrook, one of the boys who was cycling on the runway when Flight 143 came in to land, was nearly hit by a plane TWICE.

More than two decades after the Gimli landing, a small plane made an emergency landing near him on a highway in northern Manitoba.

He survived that incident too.