Shortly after dinner on July 23, 1983, a light in the cockpit of Air Canada Flight 143 alerted pilots Bob Pearson and Maurice Quintal of a fuel-pressure problem. Having punched in the same faulty fuel calculations as the engineers on the ground, the pair suspected the cause was a failing fuel pump, in which case gravity would circulate the fuel regardless. Then a second light came on. Rick Dion, a maintenance engineer for Air Canada, was on the flight and happened to be in the cockpit at the time. He agreed with the pilots that it was best to be safe and heed the warnings. Captain Pearson called into air traffic control to make way for an emergency landing in Winnipeg.

Not long after that, the plane’s left engine puttered out. The pilots began to gear up for a one-engine landing, a difficult maneuver, but one that Pearson had trained for in flight simulators. But minutes later, the second engine failed, and the controls in the cockpit went dark. “Oh, fuck,” said Pearson, according to the in-flight recorder. The $40 million, cutting-edge plane had become a great metal glider, descending at a rate of 2,500 feet per minute.

Upon hearing the news, air traffic controllers began fearing the worst, and worried that too severe a turn might knock the jet off its optimal aerodynamic course, sending it into a spiral. There was no training, no protocol for landing under these circumstances.

With the engines gone, so was the plane’s main source of electricity. The crew was forced to rely on a small but possibly sufficient backup: the ram-air turbine, which, deployed from the belly of the fuselage, generated electricity as its blades spun from the incoming stream of air. This permitted the pilots to have some control over the flaps and ailerons, which were essential in steering the plane.

The pilots also lost the function of the plane’s transponder, responsible for relaying to air traffic control the craft’s location. So, controllers resorted to old-fashioned radar, which was less precise. But it was essential for guiding the pilots on course to Winnipeg where they could land and receive emergency assistance on the ground

The flight attendants and passengers were not told that the plane was gliding without engine power, only that an emergency landing was imminent. Some passengers began writing notes to their loved ones or modifying their wills. Passenger Bryce Bell, comprehending the need for a quick and intelligent response, began to regret the two in-flight drinks he had recently enjoyed.

As copilot Maurice Quintal began to calculate their rate of descent and the distance to Winnipeg, he realized that the plane would come up some 15 miles short of the runway. Though it would mean forgoing reliable emergency assistance, Quintal urged Pearson their best hope was a nearby runway in the town of Gimli, which Quintal was familiar with from his time training in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Pearson trusted his copilot, and turned north. As the gliding aircraft gained on the runway, the pair discovered they were too high, and they risked overshooting the landing strip. Quintal also discovered that his old training runway had been in part converted into a drag-racing track, with scores of people on the ground below. With it being too risky to either point the plane higher or lower, Pearson put the plane on a tilted slide, allowing the craft to quickly shed altitude while adding little to its forward velocity.

When the plane finally hit ground, passengers were greeted by a loud bang similar to a shotgun blast. Two tires on the main landing gear burst upon impact. As weight shifted to the front of the plane, the unlocked nose gear was jammed back into its compartment, and the plane bounced forward before grinding along the runway in the direction of families now cooking and socializing after the recently ended drag races. To avoid running over the people and the two boys on bikes, Pearson prepared to turn the plane onto the grass, but it wasn’t necessary: the nose of the plane then hit the center guardrail of the racetrack, sparing the crowd.

Once the plane came to rest, the crew began to herd the passengers through a swift evacuation (just a month and a half earlier, an Air Canada flight made an emergency landing, with 23 people dying as the cabin burst into flames). The plane’s rear was elevated like the upper end of a seesaw, and the evacuation slides were too steep. Ten people received minor injuries on the way down, but these would be the greatest injuries in the whole ordeal.