Documentary review: Air Canada 143 Becomes Powerless And Falls From The Sky

This is a documentary about the near-fatal Air Canada 143 flight otherwise known as the “Gimli Glider”.

Throughout the documentary, the viewer’s attention is held captive, since the actors who enact the real-life protagonists of the story are excellent in their role.

One of the pluses of the movie is that there are no boring introductions or unnecessary dramatization.

In fact, the course of events that make up this real-life plot is itself so dramatic and inescapable that there is no need to inflate things.

The creators of the movie struck the right balance, when it comes to combining the accounts of eye witnesses and those who actually lived this experience first hand with the acting of the film’s cast.

Frequent flyers will definitely relate to this flight documentary.

In a world where traveling by plane is considered among the safest – if not the safest – ways to travel, this documentary proves that it only takes a minor error to disrupt this established strong feeling of safety.

The fact that both passengers and flight crew and pilots managed to keep as calm as they could on board is perhaps the decisive factor that helped them saves their lives.

Especially the pilots showed extraordinary skills in these highly uncertain and dangerous circumstances.

As an epilogue, I would like to add that the aviation industry has kept growing, changing, and evolving since its birth about one hundred years ago.

This is all part of a long and ongoing learning curve, which has resulted in continuous improvement, based to a large extent on lessons from past mistakes.

Sources and further reading:
Gimli Glider