Tenerife Disaster

[Ptarmigan]

Does anyone here remember Tenerife Disaster on March 27, 1977? It happened after the KLM collided with the Pan Am in heavy fog while taking off. Both were Boeing 747 airplanes, a -100 and -200. 583 people died in the disaster, making it the worst aviation accident and second worst aviation disaster after 9/11. It started with a series of events, a bombing at the Gran Canaria International Airport, all the airplanes diverted to Tenerife, fog rolling in, and an inpatient Captain Jacob Van Zanten misunderstanding radio communications. He took off without permission.

Wikipedia-Tenerife Disaster
Project Tenerife
Air Disaster-Tenerife Disaster
ASN-KLM Flight 4805
ASN-Pan Am Flight 1736

[Dionne]

Got the flights mixed up. Sorry. I know of the incident. The crash was a weather related incident coupled with a pilots concern for flight time.

[Sanibel]

I think what happened was the open radio communication to the tower from Pan Am said "We will call you when we have cleared the runway". The transmission was slightly disrupted so Van Zanten, hearing the last part "we have cleared the runway", foolishly hit the throttle. While Van Zanten, KLM's poster pilot, took the blame I think Pan Am took too long to taxi up the runway and get-off. I think part of Van Zanten's mistake was he assumed Pan Am followed right behind him up the runway so the timing for "we have cleared the runway" made sense. To me, though, the tower didn't take as much blame as it should have. It isn't called a "control" tower for nothing and a fog situation is exactly when the tower needs to take clear command. I think they were somewhat intimidated by these heavy aircraft coming to their small airport.

Van Zanten played a strategy by fueling at Tenerife instead of Las Palmas because he figured he would be in a long delay behind other airlines needing to refuel there. In doing so he made Pan Am, stuck behind them in the crowded ramp, wait a half hour to take-off. In the meantime the ceiling lowered and fog rolled over the runway.

You can't second guess human split second reactions, but hindsight makes you wish Pan Am full-throttled off the runway come what may in terms of ground damage. And, seeing there was no hope because of his heavy fuel load, Van Zanten veered away from Pan Am to save them.

One woman was headed to Tenerife from Las Palmas anyway so she disobeyed KLM's instructions to reboard. She was the only KLM survivor.