Wisdom for Life

On the evening of July 23, 1983, Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet.

Not one engine. Both.

The Boeing jet, with 69 people on board, became a glider somewhere over the Canadian prairie. No thrust. No hydraulics. The cockpit went mostly dark. Captain Bob Pearson had about 17 minutes to figure out where to put it.

How does something like this happen?

A ground crew in Montreal had calculated the fuel load using pounds instead of kilograms. Canada had recently switched to the metric system, and someone used the wrong conversion factor. The preflight checklist was completed. The paperwork was signed. The procedure was followed, just with one bad number baked in at the very beginning. By the time they reached cruising altitude, the tanks were empty.

Here is where the story gets more incredible. Captain Pearson was, in his spare time, a licensed glider pilot. He enjoyed piloting gliders during his free time as a hobby, but it was also about to be an incredible stroke of luck for everyone on board.

The closest option to land was a decommissioned Air Force base, about 65 miles ahead. He brought the plane down, the nose gear collapsed on landing, and the aircraft skidded to a stop about 100 feet from onlookers on the ground.

All 69 people walked away.

I keep coming back to the glider license.

Pearson spent his weekends developing a skill that had no obvious connection to his career. There was no reason to think he'd ever need it. And then one evening over Winnipeg, it was the difference between people living and dying.

There's a version of financial planning that feels exactly like that. The emergency cash reserve. The umbrella liability policy. The life insurance policy. The long-term care conversation. The estate planning documents that actually reflect your life today.

None of it feels urgent. None of it is exciting. And when things are going well, it can feel like overhead, with money and energy spent preparing for scenarios that probably won't happen.

Until they do.

Every single time we’ve had a client encounter a life situation that warrants one of those items: a cash emergency fund, an umbrella life insurance policy, or an untimely passing of a family member, the client and their family has found those tools to be invaluable.

The fuel miscalculation on Flight 143 wasn't dramatic. It was one wrong number, in one document, that nobody caught. The plane looked fine. The checklist was complete. Everything appeared to be in order.

Your financial plan can look exactly the same way: funded, invested, on track, and yet life can still throw a curve ball at you. Captain Bob Pearson survived that flight because he had quietly built a capability nobody expected him to need.

That's what good planning looks like.

Have a great weekend.

Jack O'Connor, CFP®