User Reviews

Having read plenty about the true incident that inspired this movie, I'll try to help clear up some of the misconceptions voiced by other contributors before going on with my own review.

The real incident, which happened in 1983, involved an Air Canada 767, which had only been in the fleet for a few months at the time. The 767 was also the first aircraft delivered to Air Canada to measure fuel in kilograms rather than pounds - a requirement mandated by the federal government (which at the time owned Air Canada as a crown corporation).

When the 1 of the 2 'channels' on the computer that operated the fuel gauges failed (originally discovered in Edmonton a few days before the flight in question), it was discovered that by pulling the circuit breaker for the faulty channel, the gauges would work properly. This was meant as a temporary fix until a new computer could be obtained. Since the 767 was such a new aircraft, this was going to take a while. However, because there was now no backup system, the Edmonton mechanic noted in the logs that a fuel drip was required to verify the computer information as a backup. He further taped off the breaker switch and marked it 'inoperative'. A day later, in Montreal, another mechanic noted the log entry and decided to tinker with the fuel gauges to see what was going on. He activated the inoperative breaker, causing the entire fuel gauge system to fail. In the rush of events leading up to the departure of the flight portrayed in the movie, that breaker was never pulled again, and the fuel gauges remained non-functional.

Following the log (and not knowing about this breaker), the pilots believed that a fuel drip would be sufficient to ensure the fuel load on board. The comment by a previous contributor about fuel not being measured in gallons or litres is correct, however, the fuel truck (or in-ground system) at Montreal measured fuel in litres, which then had to be converted into kilograms for the flight management system on board the aircraft. The fateful mistake was that the pilots and ground crew used the wrong conversion factor, and converted litres into pounds (a pound is just less than half a kilogram). Therefore, the 767 left Montreal with just less than half the fuel needed to reach Edmonton.

In real life, Air Canada put the blame squarely on the pilots for the foul-up. However, a later independent investigation shared blame equally among the pilots, ground crew, mechanics, Air Canada, and in fact the Canadian government (for forcing a metric aircraft on Air Canada in the first place). The pilots were commended for carrying off the landing as they did.

Now to the movie.

I saw this movie on TV a few weeks ago and noticed many similarities to the real-life incident. However, I found a lot of details wanting and a lot of the dramatic tension to be really fake. The internal monologues reminded me of a bad soap opera (sorry folks, but I find pretty much all soaps to be painful experiences). I echo other contributors' question regarding the knowledge of the Gimli airport - the location of the field was well known to the co-pilot as he had served there as an Air Force pilot some years before. It was similarly known to Winnipeg controllers - they were able to direct the pilots to the correct heading right away in the real incident.

I found the last 20 minutes of the movie the poorest part of the show, as most of the suspense seemed very contrived. For all the strain showing on the captain's face as he struggled to hold the plane in a side-slip (which, by the way, he held for far less time in the real incident), nobody else - not even in the cockpit, seems to be reacting to what the plane is doing. The side-slip had the plane canted up on a sharp angle, although the cabin shots show people peacefully seated in a level airplane. They definitely would have noticed this.

Most laughable was the sequence after the landing. Yes, the nose gear collapsed on landing as the hydraulics weren't working to lock it in place. Yes, the plane slid to a stop on its nose. Yes, they landed on a closed runway that had been converted to a drag strip. And yes, there was smoke in the cockpit due to smouldering insulation - heated up during the landing roll. However, I have not read anywhere that the copilot and mechanic attempted to climb back up the rear slide into the plane to fetch the captain - and even if they had, it seems more logical that they would have entered through the front door, which was only a few feet off the ground. In fact, from my reading, that is exactly how the pilot and copilot left the plane.. through the front door, and stepped down onto the ground. That whole scene left me thinking that the director was looking for just one more way to add some drama before the closing credits, but it was really very poorly done.

I personally think this movie should be re-done. It's a good story, the more so that it is completely true. Having competent writers and a good director would really help the story along - even the best actor can only do so much with a bad script. It should create the sort of suspense that "Apollo 13" did - even though you know how the story turns out, you should be left wondering as you watch the movie. Could we try again, please?

Yup, another cheesy 'disaster movie'...true, it wasn't made in the 70s, but it's all here, including we the viewer being able to hear the victims' thoughts! There's the quick biographical nonsense that doesn't really matter cos we don't really care about the people going through this terror in the sky. We also have Mariette Hartley and Gloria Carlin exchanging gossip...Coffee Morning Woman is alive and well, and on the ground!! I don't know why they bother with the scenes involving this pair...just obvious padding.

possible spoiler There's a curious anomaly with the ground radar...174 drops off the screen after the engines die of fuel starvation because the transponder has no juice. The snappy radar man announces that he's switching to primary- which SHOULD show an unidentified blip on his screen...but it doesn't...as if the big jet liner had stealth properties! How to hide a 150 ton Boeing...silent running (!) AND radar invisibility...wow! Yet through all the cheesy scenes and oh so cheesy dialogue, I still found the film has a charm. Perhaps its nod towards the 70s disaster movie fad. Also, that this happened for real gives it a gravitas it would otherwise have lacked. Fans of Gerry Anderson shows might like to note Jeremy Wilkin as the old RAF pilot who shows stiff upper lip as the plane falls out of the sky.

The end credits tell the viewer that our snappy radar man finished his shift and was at work the next day...err...why should it be otherwise? he didn't bring the plane down, it was the flight deck crew!

It's watchable but terrible script, lots of bad acting and just laughable at the end. An aircraft emergency landing and couples hugging and holding young kids in front of them. I guess it'd make for a soft impact for the adult. Passengers still out of their seats on that long final approach for an emergency landing? Silly. Maybe emergency procedures have improved, I hope so. But even in 1995 they were better than that. Right from the start when the guys fuelling the aircraft were demonstrating their incompetence I thought this looks very stupid. And it was. I fly and how that aircraft continued to glide on and on I'll never know. The glide ratio of a jumbo jet is 18 to 1 but even at 1000 feet and still tavelling at 150 - 200 konts it took forever to get down. Oh and the shoreline when they were looking for the small airstrip didn't change view at all? I guess it was made in 1995. I liked the sideslipping to slow the descent, but did they forget the flaps? Doh. Oh and the comms, ATC and pilot, all a bit poor. Never mind. Amazon always has the rubbish B films. It killed an hour or two of lockdown anyway.

The first time I saw this Canadian made-for-TV movie I found it pretty impressive, considering that it was "based on a true story" and considering what it was.

William Devane is pilot on an modern airliner flying across Canada to Winnipeg. They abruptly "run out of gas" in the middle of nowhere. They're flying along smoothly when a little light on the panel starts to go beep beep beep. "That's not normal," observes Devane coolly. The other on the flight deck -- Scott Hylands in the second seat and Winston Rekert at the airline's chief mechanic -- suggest various ways of stopping the damned beeps. Sometimes they work, but not for long. A scan of the flight manual reveals that because of some confusion in the unit of measurement, the airplane has taken on fuel measured in pounds instead of liters.

The result is that, here they are, flying merrily along at a bit more than 20,000 feet when they are suddenly undone by the metric system and all their power cuts out. Without hydraulics, there are no lights anywhere, not back in the passengers' cabin or on the flight deck. And Devane must now wrestle with controls deprived of "power steering". The only way to keep the airplane flying is to keep the nose down, but in doing so they are losing altitude. And NO LANDING FIELD IN SIGHT! It does not bode well for Devane, his crew, or his scared-stiff passengers.

Not to worry. All three men on the flight deck know their business -- except for those liters and quarts and things -- and the result is cooperation. The movie doesn't give us a hero. It shows us how teamwork can solve problems that an individual can't.

I like it so much when it was released that I bought a cheap copy from some firm in the Czech Republic. Watching it for the second time was less of a thrill because I knew what was coming and because certain formulaic plot elements rather leaped off the screen and attacked me viciously.

Molly Parker, with her pale, lightly freckled, longitudinal face, is not Hollywood glamorous but radiates a cool Egyptian beauty, kind of like Akhenaten, if he'd been a woman, which maybe he was. She was trained as a ballerina and gave a striking performance as a necrophiliac in "Kissed." I'm deeply in love with her, even though she never responds to my many mash notes. But, man, she's stuck in a role that every disaster-movie and soap opera fan must be bored with by now. She's the girl friend who wants to have children and "build a home", while her fiancé is not at all keen on the idea. When the final clinch comes, the conflict is resolved. Guess which way it goes.

You see what I mean by "formulaic plot elements." During the climactic approach, for the first time, we begin to hear the inner monologues of some passengers, which generated my own inner monologue -- Zzzz. There's the snobby businessman back in the cabin, who cares only about power. The stern flight attendant, Shelley Hack, tells him so, just in case you missed it as he strides back and forth issuing orders over his cell phone. Does he realize there's more to life than money? Are you kidding? There's the bullying dilatory ex hockey star who pushes everyone aside and shouts often. I think he finds religion, although I'm not sure that a prayer which emphasizes the phrase "Help ME get out of this" is actually very spiritual. And Parker dreams: "I should be afraid. Why am I not afraid? Because I'm with him!"

I missed the beautiful flight attendant who loves the captain and who is perhaps preggers but we'll have to accept the fact that Devane is happily married and we find out nothing about Shelley Hack's love life, which, in its own quiet way, is too bad. And where is the kid who needs the rare transfusion or the kidney transplant? Well, we have to be philosophical. This is, after all, "based on a true story." And I still got a kick out of it.

The obvious negatives to these kind of miracle movies is that if not based on a real life event, you might not believe the story but beyond the Airport (1970) like personal and oh so dull micro dramas that must be endured to stretch out the running time and this movie is particularly gruelling in this area and you might if you are an aviation buff already know the outcome. Before long I realised how similar this movie was in construction to the vastly superior Sully from Clint Eastwood about the famous Hudson river miracle of 2009. None the less i thought the climax was done very well and though clearly made on a very low budget the film was mostly above average and William Devane certainly held it all together very well. One grip though was that everyone seemed remarkably to calm in the face of certain death, but perhaps I am being too critical on this score.

FREEFALL: FLIGHT 174 is a TV movie thriller much in the vein of the AIRPORT movies of the 1970s. In it, a Canadian airliner runs out of fuel mid-journey and has to find somewhere to land before it crashes. Sadly, this is a cheap and melodramatic affair, not convincing for a moment. William Devane heads the cast and is fine as the captain, but the story is slow and unconvincing, bogged down in the boring lives of the passengers and crew. There's never a real sense of danger or the kind of suspense required to make a thriller like this work.

I wanted to read the other comments before leaving my review and the majority definately rules: This movie is aweful! From the acting to the non-realistic animation to the countless errors. I was actually hoping that the flaps would have been extended by a stretch of the imagination (can't extend flaps without engines). The landing gear cannot be lowered unless you have electricity. That tiny little fan that was going was not sufficient by any stretch to lower the landing gear. The one thing I thought was quite peculiar is when they landed, the back wheels touched down and then the nose one broke off, thus suspending the plane with both back tires in the air. How did the captain apply left and right brakes to tires that weren't touching the ground? Did they forget the spoilers? Word to the director: Find out *all* you can about planes before attempting a "plane" movie. Sorry for the technical rant, but I give this movie 1/10.

This 1995 television movie which is fairly based on the true story of the "Gimli Glider". July 23, 1983 a brand new Boeing 767 the actual error made in fueling was in converting the fuel volume to weight. The crew used the familiar density number in pounds per litre rather than the correct one for kilograms per litre and made a very big mistake and the Boeing took off with only a quarter of the fuel this was required and at 41,000 feet in air the plane runs out of fuel. The skill of the pilots and a flight engineer in the jump seat glide the huge jet down to ground and land it safely

This movie stars William Devane, Scott Hylands, Shelley Hack, Kevin McNulty and Winston Rekert as the main characters. Television director Jorge Montesi takes the helm of director. The overall result is a good television movie that makes you stick to your couch until the movie has finish. I remember when I first hired this movie back in 1995 and was very surprised at the overall result so convincing that give it to my family members to view. Although its not accurate its still very convincing.

The action in the cockpit scenes are great and a real set of a Boeing 767 was used for them. The only disappointment is they used a set of a Boeing 747 or a TriStar for the cabin layout. There's a bit of soap in the movie as well and its bit a sloppy but still fits into the movie. The special effects are basic CGI and its very poor but what can you expect for a low budget film. (They spent all there money on the cockpit set it looks like). The film also has strange camera angles and shots. (such as seeing the plane from the top view as it flies through the air). But overall its a good television movie that kills 90 minutes.