A Plane Ran Out of Fuel over the Atlantic. The Pilots Saved 306 Lives(www.popularmechanics.com)
6 pointsby ilamontan hour ago3 comments
  • HawtAds15 minutes ago
    Not the first time this sort of thing happened in Canada, fuel starvation is surprisingly common in aviation.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

  • budman123 minutes ago
    This is why you don't have FSD for airplanes. (of course, an argument could have been made that FSD would have handled the leak a little better)
    • HawtAds17 minutes ago
      I would say modern autoland (both GPS based and ILS types) systems are a little better when it comes to handling emergency issues like maximizing range and endurance but the problem with autoland is that they require a lot of things to work perfectly and will refuse to take any risk (autoland systems are not probabilistic like Tesla FSDs, they are mostly automatic traditional control systems). So if the plane will miss the threshold by a few feet the autoland won't even attempt it.
      • budman114 minutes ago
        The 'never happen' events need a human. Like "birds. both engines. looks like we are setting it down on the Hudson".
  • kotaKatan hour ago
    ... I wonder if this was inspiration for Flight Simulator X's mission, Limited Options. [1] That one was flown on a 737-800, but...

    "When the plane suffers a fuel leak causing the engines to fail at 35,000 feet, you must decide whether to glide to Malé or Hanimadhoo Island to save 150 passengers from drowning in the Indian Ocean."

    Definitely a challenging flight under the simulator, total balls of steel to the pilots to pull it off for real.

    [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neAVfys9jfo