Despite frequent spells of low visibility, the airport also didnt have any taxiway markings or a reliable means of measuring runway visibility range. The instructions used the word "takeoff," but did not include an explicit statement that they were cleared for takeoff. The villainization of a captain who made a mistake is not necessarily an indictment of our collective humanity, but as a coping mechanism it is less than ideal. With the earlier bomb blast at Gran Canaria still fresh on their minds, the controllers first thought was that the terrorists had struck again. He travelled with Howard Harper, who was killed. Tenerife was merely one of dozens of accidents which collectively led to the development of CRM, a program which coalesced out of research conducted both before and after the accident. The two. Robina van Lanschot,[16] a tour guide, had chosen not to reboard for the flight to Las Palmas, because she lived on Tenerife and thought it impractical to fly to Gran Canaria only to return to Tenerife the next day. The collision took place in a high-density cloud. [38], Los Rodeos Airport, the only operating airport on Tenerife in 1977, was closed to all fixed-wing traffic for two days. Video, 00:04:17Why did 918 people die because of this man? The KLM crewmembers were worried about compliance with draconian duty time laws, worsening weather, and mounting delays; and van Zanten even expressed concern that his wife would worry about him if she heard about the bomb explosion on the evening news. It cannot be emphasized enough that this had long since ceased to be a normal flight the number of considerations and ad-hoc decisions facing the two crews was highly abnormal. [4] The Pan Am crew indicated that they would prefer to circle in a holding pattern until landing clearance was given (they had enough fuel to safely stay in the air for two more hours), but they were ordered to divert to Tenerife. [31], Due to the fog, neither crew was able to see the other plane on the runway ahead of them. More than forty years later, the uncertain answers to these questions still draw us back to that fateful day on Tenerife. Its nose landing gear cleared the Pan Am, but its left-side engines, lower fuselage, and main landing gear struck the upper right side of the Pan Am's fuselage,[10] ripping apart the center of the Pan Am jet almost directly above the wing. [30], A simultaneous radio call from the Pan Am crew caused mutual interference on the radio frequency, which was audible in the KLM cockpit as a three-second-long shrill sound (or heterodyne). Many summaries of the accident today would have the reader believe van Zanten took off knowing he had not received clearance, even though this couldnt be further from the truth. 177. Los Rodeos, renamed Tenerife North Airport (TFN), was then used only for domestic and inter-island flights until 2002, when a new terminal was opened and Tenerife North began to carry international traffic again. The rescue of the survivors was chaotic but swift. It did not take the power of hindsight to see that they were in a dangerous position. The other 61 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am aircraft survived, including the captain, first officer, and flight engineer. Neither plane was supposed to be on Tenerife in the first place; they diverted there after the closure of Gran Canaria. The Pan Am pilots, also unsettled by the situation, decided to make their position clear as well, and interpreted the pause after Okay as an opportunity to do so. According to the ALPA report, as the Pan Am aircraft taxied to the runway, the visibility was about 500m (1,600ft). The airport was forced to accommodate a great number of large aircraft due to rerouting from the terrorist incident resulting in disruption of the normal use of taxiways. Part of the wreckage of the two Boeing 747s, KLM 4805 and Pan Am 1736, which collided on the runway of Los Rodeos . From the moment it began, the evacuation was conducted in a rush of pure desperation. After some initial waffling over which route to use, he eventually instructed the KLM crew to back-taxi up the runway in the wrong direction, then make a 180-degree turn at the far end. Tenerife Airport Disaster. Thats two, Captain Grubbs said, spotting the second exit drifting past them through the dense fog. [2] [3] The collision occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway. But for the pilots, figuring out where they were and where they were going was easier said than done. [2][3] The collision occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway. . She was therefore not on the KLM plane when the accident happened, and would be the only survivor of those who flew from Amsterdam to Tenerife on Flight 4805. A terrorist incident at Gran Canaria Airport had caused . All 248 passengers and crew aboard the KLM plane died, as did 335 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am plane,[35] primarily due to the fire and explosions resulting from the fuel spilled and ignited in the impact. These include the Survival in the Sky episode "Blaming the Pilot", the Seconds From Disaster episode "Collision on the Runway", PBS's NOVA episode "The Deadliest Plane Crash" in 2006, the PBS special Surviving Disaster: How the Brain Works Under Extreme Duress (based on Amanda Ripley's book The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why) in 2011, Destroyed in Seconds and an episode of the Canadian TV series Mayday (known by different names in different countries), namely the season 16 standard length episode "Disaster at Tenerife" with the earlier more in-depth 90-minute "Crash of the Century" being a spin-off. The authorities reopened Gran Canaria airport once the bomb threat had been contained. An hour later and an ocean away, at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the crew of a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747200 also reported for duty in advance of a flight to the Canary Islands. Witness is a programme of the stories of our times told by the people who were there. The KLM plane remained briefly airborne, but the impact had sheared off the outer left engine, caused significant amounts of shredded materials to be ingested by the inner left engine, and damaged the wings. The Pan Am crew instinctively knew this, but the controller, who was unfamiliar with the capabilities of the 747, did not. Roger sir, we are cleared to the Papa beacon, flight level nine zero, At that moment, Captain van Zanten pushed the throttles to takeoff power and announced, Were going!, Apparently taken by surprise, First Officer Meurs hastily finished his transmission: right turn out zero four zero until intercepting the three two five. [6] The sum of settlements for property and damages was $110 million (or $492 million today),[50] an average of $189,000 (or $845,000 today) per victim, due to limitations imposed by European Compensation Conventions in effect at the time. Somewhat remarkable was that 61 passengers, including the flight deck, managed to survive from the Pan Am jumbo. Pan Am Flight 1736. The KLM crew then received instructions that specified the route that the aircraft was to follow after takeoff. All in all, there were several sources of stress pressing in upon van Zanten from all sides. One woman bravely jumped first, only for everyone else to jump on top of her. . A younger crowd might have fared better, but the average age of those on the flight was well north of 50, and many, it seemed, never even tried to escape. How can the loss of so many lives be rendered less senseless? After two seconds, he continued, Standby for takeoff, I will call you., At that exact moment, First Officer Bragg on the Pan Am, believing that the pause indicated the end of the transmission, keyed his mic and said, And were still taxiing down the runway, the Clipper one seven three six.. In their final report, Spanish investigators placed most of the blame on van Zanten for taking off without clearance, in the process doing away with much of the nuance. There were, of course, several links in the chain of events which could only be put down to coincidence (or, if you prefer, fate). Captain Grubbs apparently fell all the way through into the cargo hold, as did a flight attendant; both managed to escape through a hole in the bottom of the plane. If they had been paying close attention the pilots probably could have understood what was said, but such concentration is not normally needed and in this case was not applied. Many broke limbs, or worse, during the fall. Most of the survivors on the Pan Am walked out onto the intact left wing, the side away from the collision, through holes in the fuselage structure. 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The crash of two Boeing 747s at Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North Airport) in 1977 was the deadliest in history. y Aeronave Boeing 747, matrcula N736PA de PANAM en el Aeropuerto de los Rodeos, Tenerife (Islas Canarias), Civil Aviation Accident and Incident Investigation Commission, Human Factors Report on the Tenerife Accident, 1947 KLM Douglas DC-3 Copenhagen disaster, December 1958 Aviaco SNCASE Languedoc crash, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tenerife_airport_disaster&oldid=1134152400, Accidents and incidents involving the Boeing 747, Airliner accidents and incidents involving ground collisions, Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error, Airliner accidents and incidents involving fog, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from October 2022, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Articles with Spanish-language sources (es), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0. The motors were still running during the evacuation, according to survivors. But this vulnerability to coincidences is one of the inherent dangers of an unstable complex system. The apparent hesitation of the flight engineer and the first officer to challenge Veldhuyzen van Zanten further. Schreuder had 17,031 flight hours, of which 543 hours were on the 747. Investigations, books, news reports, academic studies, and even movies have chronicled what's known as the Tenerife. Get off!" This steep authority gradient would have been reinforced by the fact that van Zanten had recently given Meurs his Boeing 747 type rating, and by the fact that Shreuder was apparently a proponent of a limited role for flight engineers, believing that they should stick to aircraft systems and not involve themselves in operational decision-making. If they couldnt make it, they would have to cancel the flight, and KLM would have to find enough empty hotel rooms to house all 235 passengers and 14 crew on a small island at the height of the tourist season. Robina van Lanschot, a Dutch tour guide based on Tenerife, decided to go against protocol and made her way home from the airport without permission, a minor act of disobedience which would save her life. This particular aircraft had operated the inaugural 747 commercial flight on January 22, 1970. Captain Robert Bragg was the co-pilot aboard the Pan Am plane, and was one of the few who survived the collision. The destination for both Pan Am flight 1736 and KLM flight 4805 was Gran Canaria Airport, located in the city of Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria. Warns had 15,210 flight hours, of which 559 hours were on the 747. The C-130 transport was arranged by Lt. Col Dr. James K. Slaton, who arrived before the crash investigators and started triaging surviving passengers. The investigators suggested the reason for this was a desire to leave as soon as possible in order to comply with KLM's duty-time regulations (which went in place earlier that year) and before the weather deteriorated further. From the smoldering wreck of the Pan Am jet, its left wing jutting out from a pile of charred metal, pieces of both planes lay strewn down the runway for several hundred meters, including some of the KLMs engines and numerous pieces of the right side of the Pan Am, some of which were found as far away as the second wreckage site. She could not have known that out of 249 passengers and crew who flew into Tenerife on flight 4805, she would be the only survivor. Unfortunately, they would not be leaving Los Rodeos in a timely fashion. Hierarchical relations among crew members were played down, and greater emphasis was placed on team decision-making by mutual agreement. [2][3], The subsequent investigation by Spanish authorities concluded that the primary cause of the accident was the KLM captain's decision to take off in the mistaken belief that a takeoff clearance from air traffic control (ATC) had been issued. Alongside this prestigious crew, there were also 11 flight attendants and 235 passengers, most of them younger Dutch families heading to the Canaries for a few days of sun and surf, courtesy of tour operator Holland International. As investigators from Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States converged on the island of Tenerife, they faced the aviation industrys greatest nightmare made manifest: the fatal collision of two heavily loaded jumbo jets. Unlike most other North Atlantic archipelagoes, the Canary Islands were not uninhabited when Europeans and their armies first arrived in the 1400s. In some accidents it can be said that the resulting changes ensured that the victims did not die in vain. By half past 14:00, the number of planes had become so large that the queue spilled all the way across the parking apron and into parts of the main taxiway. Go ahead, ask." As the crew urged the survivors to run away from the burning plane, a damaged engine exploded, throwing debris in all directions and killing a flight attendant. [39] The first aircraft that was able to land was a United States Air Force C-130 transport, which landed on the airport's main taxiway at 12:50 on 29 March. Taxiway C-4 would have required two 35 turns. The controller was also struggling to figure out how best to handle the massive 747s. Statements issued by the Fuerzas Armadas Guanches, whose crude bomb had set the whole sequence of events in motion, expressed genuine horror at the scale of the accident and denied that they had intended to cause such destruction, although this was later undermined by the groups leader, who reported from exile in Algeria that the deceased tourists should never have come to the islands during a time of armed struggle.. In the control tower, the dense fog obscured the controllers view of the wreckage and fire, but the sound of two explosions was unmistakable. Far to the southwest of Portugal, in the glistening subtropical waters off the coast of Morocco, lie the Canary Islands. The Tenerife Airport Disaster happened on March 27, 1977, at 5:06 p.m., when two Boeing 747s operating the flights KLM 4805 and Pan Am 1736 collided on the runway of Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife, causing the deadliest accident in aviation history that resulted in the loss of 583 crew members and passengers from both flights. MagellanTV is a new kind of streaming service run by filmmakers with 3,000+ documentaries! First Officer Bob Bragg and Flight Engineer George Warns left the airplane to check whether they could fit past the KLM 747, only to return crestfallen: having paced out the distance between the KLMs wing and the edge of the taxiway, they found it to be four meters too narrow. As the oppressive regime of dictator Francisco Franco began to unravel following his death in 1975, a pro-independence political party took advantage of the instability to launch an armed wing known as the Fuerzas Armadas Guanches, with the stated aim of winning self-government for the Canary Islands through terrorism. Video, 00:00:45, Snowboarder takes to the slopes of Londonderry, UK weather forecast: Will it snow in your area? At the time of the accident, Veldhuyzen van Zanten was KLM's chief flight instructor, with 11,700 flight hours, of which 1,545 hours were on the 747. Having no good reason to believe that the KLM would take off without clearance, he considered Meurss transmission to mean that they had assumed the takeoff position. [19], The crew successfully identified the first two taxiways (C-1 and C-2), but their discussion in the cockpit indicated that they had not sighted the third taxiway (C-3), which they had been instructed to use. Once all the passengers were on board, he decided to fill up with an additional 55,500 liters of fuel enough to fly not just to Gran Canaria but all the way back to Amsterdam as well. The crew asked for clarification and the controller responded emphatically by replying: "The third one, sir; one, two, three; third, third one." Analysis of the CVR transcript showed that the KLM pilot thought that he had been cleared for takeoff, while the Tenerife control tower believed that the KLM 747 was stationary at the end of the runway, awaiting takeoff clearance. When it became clear that the KLM aircraft was approaching at takeoff speed, Captain Grubbs exclaimed, "Goddamn, that son-of-a-bitch is coming! The disaster simply added another 583 deaths to the growing pile of evidence that testified against the existing system. [22] The official report from the Spanish authorities explained that the controller instructed the Pan Am aircraft to use the third taxiway because this was the earliest exit that they could take to reach the unobstructed section of the parallel taxiway. The controller then immediately added "stand by for takeoff, I will call you",[4] indicating that he had not intended the instruction to be interpreted as a takeoff clearance. The official investigation suggested that this might have been due to not only to the captain's seniority in rank but also his being one of the most respected pilots working for the airline. For the next minute, the crew struggled to figure out which exit was in fact the third one. The world wanted to know, but there would be no simple answers. That would mean they should leave the runway via the fourth and final exit, which was easy for a 747 to use. Video, 00:02:21UK weather forecast: Will it snow in your area? Near the front, however, passengers managed to escape via several avenues. Captain van Zanten had to give the maneuver his utmost concentration, because the 747 requires 42 meters to turn around, and the runway was only 46 meters wide. There are few who can claim to have survived the horrors of an airliner crash, but David Alexander is one of those few. [61], Cockpit procedures were also changed after the accident. With a minimum takeoff visibility of 300 meters, they knew they needed to start rolling before the cloud enveloped them again. The KLMs number four engine sliced off the Pan Ams fully occupied upper deck and hurled it down the runway, instantly killing everyone inside. Initially, 327 of the 396 on board were said to have died, but this soon grew to 335 as several badly burned victims succumbed to their injuries. The controller thought he meant they were at the takeoff position, but he seemed to have a moment of doubt. Video, 00:02:00What does Andrew Tate promise his followers? Although their characterization of the KLM pilots induced vigorous eye-rolling, the Dutch investigators were essentially right when they explained that the causes of the crash went way beyond Captain van Zantens mistaken decision to take off without clearance. It remains the worlds deadliest air disaster. Who was to blame? There were 61 survivors. But nobody knew for sure. Captain Grubbs applied full power to the throttles and made a sharp left turn towards the grass in an attempt to avoid the impending collision. [13] There had been a phone call warning of the bomb, and another call received soon afterwards made claims of a second bomb at the airport. Captain Jacob Louis Veldhuyzen van Zanten was a living legend at KLM, the face of the airlines advertising campaign and the head of its Boeing 747 training program. Watch 40 years of the funniest Breakfast fails. Flying in a nose high position with its tail about two meters off the ground, KLM flight 4805 slammed broadside into Pan Am flight 1736 at a speed of 260 kilometers per hour. The crash also would have been avoided if the gap next to the KLM 747 was four meters wider, or if the controller and the Pan Am crew had not picked up their microphones to broadcast warnings at exactly the same time. Their report also suggested that the controllers had been listening to a football match and that this fact had been covered up by Spain. All around them, explosions burst forth in every direction; fire surged in through the shattered windows and up through the riven floor. The co-pilot who survived the Tenerife aircraft disaster In March 1977, two jumbo jets collided at Tenerife Airport killing 583 people. Travel infrastructure in the archipelago was more suited to the reality of the 1960s, when the number of tourists had been ten times less, and the system frequently broke down under the strain. Five hundred and eighty-three people lost their lives; only 61 survived the air disaster. Meanwhile, KLM Captain Jacob van Zanten made another calculated decision which would further delay their departure from Tenerife but might reduce their overall time on duty. KLM Flight 4805 was a charter flight for Holland International Travel Group and had arrived from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Netherlands. But when the all clear came to resume their journeys, a combination of bad weather and miscommunication meant that Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway as KLM Flight 4805 attempted take-off. ATC clearance, it must be said, is not the same thing as takeoff clearance. In the case of the Tenerife disaster, this manifested in the form of self-doubt that prevented the First Officer and Flight Engineer from fully exploring or articulating their own concerns, laboring under a mistaken assumption that the Captain had a better understanding of the situation than they did. by Dan. The Dutch comments on the report included a number of extremely questionable takes, including that there was no evidence of stress, nothing wrong with the authority gradient, and no errors by the KLM crew, preferring to put the blame on a series of unfortunate misunderstandings. "I was one of the people who survived," Joani said. In addition, neither of the aircraft could be seen from the control tower, and the airport was not equipped with ground radar. Engines, pieces of fuselage, and burning jet fuel flew in every direction. As airport firefighters hurried toward the dim glow of the flames, they came upon the fuselage of KLM flight 4805 lying on the runway, completely engulfed in a raging inferno. The full load of fuel, which had caused the earlier delay, ignited immediately into a fireball that could not be subdued for several hours. Join the discussion of this article on Reddit! In this case, having spent a good chunk of the afternoon coordinating with the Pan Am plane, the KLM crew would have been primed to pay attention upon hearing the callsign Clipper. But in his final transmission to Pan Am 1736, the controller for the first time that day used the NATO alphabet callsign Papa Alpha instead, thus failing to capture the KLM pilots attention. Visibility oscillated between about 100 and 900 meters on a very rapid interval, and the taxiways were not marked with any sort of sign or painted number. Passengers and crew from the Pan Am aircraft escaped onto the intact left wing and jumped to the ground. In 1977, a cross in Rancho Bernardo was dedicated to nineteen area residents who died in the disaster. Video, 00:04:17. Although he obviously knew that in real life a clearance from a controller was needed, his time as an instructor had conditioned him to the point that his basic instinct, were he to for some reason revert to it, was to take off without clearance. Is he not clear, that Pan American? Shreuder repeated. And as if that wasnt enough, the controllers thick Spanish accent made it hard for the Pan Am crew to understand what he was saying. And so KLM flight 4805 accelerated down the runway toward the dark wall of fog, unaware of the danger which lurked within. The Pan Am crew appeared to remain unsure of their position on the runway until the collision, which occurred near the intersection with the fourth taxiway (C-4). Tenerife Memorial On March 27th, 1977, a Boeing 747 of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines collided fatally with a 747 of Pan American Airlines on the runway of Los Rodeos International Airport on the Canary island of Tenerife. Radar could have prevented that crash too, but despite recommendations to do so following Tenerife, none had been installed. Rush of pure desperation exit drifting past them through the dense fog frequent spells of visibility... 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