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12 - Orono Weekly Times Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Basic Black by Arthur Black Canada: tall poppies prohibited American applauds with glee the highest climber of the tree. Englishman has half a mind the tree is not the proper kind. Canadian with tiny frown takes an axe and chops it down. A poet by the name of Robin Skelton wrote those lines. Mister Skelton was a Cambridge graduate who flew with the Royal Air Force in India. He was also an authority on Irish literature, a poet, a world-class translator of ancient Greek and Roman and a practicing witch. In most countries, Robin Skelton would have been a household name. Alas, he chose Canada for a homeland and died largely unknown. We don't do heroes well in this country - unless they carry a hockey stick. As someone once said, "Americans remember where they were when Kennedy was shot; Canadians remember where they were when Henderson scored." You don't need hockey smarts to be a hero in America. Take the case of Chesley Sullenberger. Just a short while ago, Mister Sullenberger - Sully to his friends - was a quiet, retiring commercial pilot for U.S. Airways. But then on January 15th the engines on the plane he was flying from New York to Charlotte, North Carolina sucked in a couple of Canada Geese and seized up. Against advice from the experts, Sully landed the plane in the Hudson River. All 153 people on board survived. And Chesley Sullenberger's life changed overnight. He was A Certified American Hero. He got a tickertape parade in his hometown of Danville, California. He was a guest on Larry King. The program 60 Minutes did a profile on him. All because he fulfilled part of his job description: he landed his plane safely. How, one wonders, would that have been handled if it had happened in Canada? We don't have to wonder. We have Air Canada Flight 143. On July 23, 1983, AC 143 was en route from Montreal to Edmonton with 61 passengers and eight crew aboard. About half way through the flight - over Red Lake, Ontario at 41,000 feet - the cockpit crew heard something no cockpit crew wants to hear: a warning buzzer indicating a fuel pressure problem. Seconds later, another buzzer indicating another fuel pressure problem followed by complete failure of one engine. No problem. They could easily divert to Winnipeg and execute a single-engine landing. All pilots are trained for that. Then came another warning buzzer followed by a sound no one in the cockpit had heard before. It was a loud, ominous BONNNNNNNNG. It was the "All Engines Out" alarm. The instrument panel dimmed and went blank. The Boeing 737, all 200 feet of it, was flying gliding - over northern Ontario wilderness. A hundred-plus tons of steel, people and Samsonite luggage does not a good glider make. Even though it was eight miles up, the plane was settling fast. They'd already dropped 5,000 feet while covering just ten nautical miles. It didn't take the cockpit crew long to figure out that the plane would never make it to Winnipeg. But Flight 143 had two aces in the hole: the pilot, Captain Robert Pearson was a former glider pilot. And the first officer Maurice Quintal knew the area. He used to fly out of Gimli, Manitoba, which was a lot closer than Winnipeg. Quintal radioed Winnipeg suggesting the air force base at Gimli as an alternative. Which would have been a no-brainer if there still was an air force base at Gimli, but the base had been decommissioned and turned into a local dragstrip. What's more today was "Family Day" meaning car races on the former runway surrounded by Winnebagos, station wagons, picnic blankets, barbecues and lots of civilians. Not exactly a perfect landing site, but the only one they had. Miraculously, using all his glider training skills, Captain Pearson wrestled the stricken, lumbering airliner down the strip. He blew out two tires, scraped up the plane's nose and gave several hundred picnickers the thrill of a lifetime, but not one spectator and, aside for a few bumps and bruises, not a single passenger or crew member was hurt. The Canadian twist? Flight 143 had run out of fuel in midair. Why? Because Canada was in the process of converting to the metric system at the time. Someone had screwed up. Instead of 22,000 kilograms, they took off with 22,000 pounds of fuel. Enough to get them almost halfway to their destination. Actually there was another Canadian twist to the story. Remember the hero treatment America gave Chesley Sullenberger for landing his plane in the Hudson? Air Canada rewarded Captain Pearson with...a six month suspension. First Officer Quintal was suspended for two weeks. Well, it's their own fault for working for Air Canada. Now if they'd played for the Edmonton Oilers.... 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