The Gimli Glider gets all the glory. A brand-new Air Canada 767 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet over Manitoba, glides to a dead airstrip, and everybody lives. Great story. But here’s the thing: the Gimli Glider wasn’t even close to the only time a perfectly good aircraft turned into an expensive glider because somebody botched the fuel math.

Aviation runs on two things: thrust and trust. Trust that somebody did the calculations right, checked the gauges, and made sure there was enough kerosene in the tanks to actually reach the destination. When that trust breaks down, you get some of the most harrowing — and occasionally absurd — emergencies in flying history.

Here are five fuel-starvation incidents that deserve to be just as famous as the Gimli Glider. Some ended in miracles. Others ended in tragedy. All of them started with somebody getting the numbers wrong.

Air Transat Flight 236: The Azores Glider

On August 24, 2001, Air Transat Flight 236 was cruising over the Atlantic at 39,000 feet when the crew noticed something alarming: the fuel quantity on the right wing was dropping fast. A leaking fuel line — caused by a maintenance error during an engine swap — was hemorrhaging kerosene into the night sky.

Captain Robert Piché and First Officer Dirk DeJager did what any reasonable pilot would do: they panicked quietly and started looking for somewhere to land. The nearest airport was Lajes Field in the Azores, 120 kilometres away. The problem? Both engines flamed out before they got there.

All 152 people on board survived, largely thanks to Senior First Officer John Coward, who managed to coax just enough lift out of the dying aircraft to clear the A30 road — packed with rush-hour traffic — before touching down. The cause? Ice crystals had formed in the fuel system during the long flight from Beijing, clogging the fuel-oil heat exchangers. The fuel was there. It just couldn’t reach the engines.

Rolls-Royce redesigned the Trent 800 fuel system. Boeing modified the 777’s fuel heating. And the A30 road got a new set of approach lights.

Tuninter Flight 1153: The Wrong Fuel Gauges

On August 6, 2005, Tuninter Flight 1153 — an ATR 72 turboprop — ditched into the Mediterranean Sea off Sicily after running out of fuel. Sixteen of the 39 people on board died.

The cause was almost comically preventable: during maintenance, someone had installed the fuel quantity indicators from an ATR 42 — a different aircraft with smaller tanks. The gauges showed plenty of fuel. The tanks were nearly empty. The pilots had no way of knowing until both engines quit over open water.

The investigation found that the maintenance technician who installed the wrong gauges had not been properly trained, and the error was not caught during any of the subsequent inspections. It’s the aviation equivalent of putting a car’s speedometer in a truck and wondering why the numbers look off — except this time, people died because of it.

The Common Thread

Every one of these incidents comes back to the same uncomfortable truth: fuel management is one of the simplest things in aviation, and one of the most deadly when it goes wrong. You count the fuel. You check the gauges. You plan for contingencies. And when you’re running low, you say the word “emergency” — loudly, clearly, and without hesitation.

The Gimli Glider made for a great movie-of-the-week. These five incidents made for better training manuals.

Sources: NTSB, BEA France, AAIC Italy, Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Aviation Safety Network