ABSTRACT
To get into a situation from which one needs to be recovered, heroically or otherwise, usually requires a fair measure of misfortune. But there are also some recoveries that only occur through the intervention of extraordinary good fortune. This chapter describes two aviation recoveries in which luck played a huge part. But luck was by no means the whole of it. On 23 July 1983, a Boeing 767 aircraft en route to Edmonton from Ottawa ran out of fuel over Red Lake, Ontario, about halfway to its destination. After the explosion in the number two engine, the pilots were greatly assisted by Captain Dennis Fitch, a United Airlines training and check pilot with over 3,000 hours on the DC-10. He had been flying as a passenger on United 232. Forty-five minutes later, the aircraft crash-landed at Sioux City, Iowa. Of the 285 passengers and 11 crew members on board, 174 passengers and ten crew members survived.
