My favorite pilot story is a commercial Canadian passenger jet that ran out of gas at 30000 ft. I forget what caused the error but it was a large jet and no gas. The pilot turned the jet into a "glider" and desperately searched for an airfield. The best he could come up with was an old deserted small plane airport that was being used by model plane enthusiasts. He managed to reach the airfield and successfully landed it in the very short strip provided. There was no crash nor injuries. The people flying their models must have been stunned to see such a large jet come gliding in to land. The fact that he landed with no gas and at a very short unimproved airstrip amazes me. That guy should have gotten a major award. Really.

He was a very good flier, but as a captain, he made a terrible mistake.
  The fuel exhaustion was due to him not making absolutely certain that they had taken on enough fuel... there was some confusion about a US/metric conversion that had them taking off with half the fuel they needed to complete the planned leg.
He was also damn lucky his FO knew about Gimli, a closed runway now used for weekend amateur drag races.  It was practically right under them when the engines quit. 

This put Air Canada in a difficult situation. On the one hand it was a serious case of pilot error & on the other a fine piece of airmanship. This quote is from the Wikipedia article from my previous link: "It has been reported that following the Air Canada internal investigation Captain Pearson was demoted for six months, First Officer Quintal suspended for two weeks and three maintenance workers also suspended. Both pilots however continued to work for Air Canada and in 1985 were awarded the first ever Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Diploma for Outstanding Airmanship. C-GAUN was patched up at Gimli and flown out two days later for complete repairs. As of June 2007 C-GAUN is still in service with Air Canada."

Capt Pearson retired in 1991.