Origin
"Mayday: Air Disaster" is a documentary television series that explores aviation accidents and incidents. It dramatizes real-life events, reconstructing the circumstances leading up to the disasters and analyzing their causes using expert interviews and computer-generated imagery. In season 5, episode 2, the show documented the Canada 143 flight incident, also known as the "Gimli Glider" incident, which occurred on July 23, 1983. It involved a Boeing 767-200 aircraft flying from Montreal to Edmonton with a stopover in Ottawa. The incident began when ground maintenance staff in Montreal mistakenly refueled the aircraft using pounds instead of kilograms. This error resulted in the aircraft being fueled with only about half the required amount of fuel.
The flight crew, led by Captain Robert Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal, performed their pre-flight checks, including verifying the fuel quantity. However, they relied on the fuel gauges, which indicated sufficient fuel according to their understanding of the imperial measurement system. Shortly after takeoff from Montreal, the aircraft experienced a dual-engine flameout at an altitude of 41,000 feet (12,500 meters). Both engines stopped functioning, leaving the plane without power.
Without engine power, the crew had to glide the aircraft, now known as the "Gimli Glider," to the nearest suitable airport for an emergency landing. The nearest airport was the former Royal Canadian Air Force Station in Gimli, Manitoba. Despite the challenging circumstances, Captain Pearson skillfully executed a powerless landing at Gimli. The former airbase had been converted into a motorsport racing track, and a race was taking place on one of the runways at the time. Fortunately, there were no fatalities or injuries among the 69 passengers and crew members, though some sustained minor injuries during the evacuation.
An investigation into the incident revealed a fuel measurement error during refueling in Montreal. It also highlighted issues with the aircraft's fuel quantity indication system, which was not designed to handle metric unit conversions. As a result of this incident, Air Canada and other airlines implemented stricter fueling procedures and improved crew training regarding fuel calculations and metric system usage.
The Quote Itself
When this episode aired in Japan, it became a huge meme on the Japanese internet due to how ridiculous and miraculous the incident was. The quote came from an interview within the show by a Winnipeg air traffic controller by the name of "Ron Hewett" when the incident happened.
The original sentence in the documentary is actually, "Holy cow, I'm talking to a dead man." But in the Japanese dub, the translation team decided to translate this sentence to "もう助からないゾ" (Mou tasukaranai zo), which means "There's no saving [them] anymore."
On Pixiv
Because the wording suggests a hopeless situation of "there's no way out" and gives off a somewhat immoral and dangerous vibe, it tends to be used in illustrations that mainly feature seductive women in situations where it seems that there is no way out.
