Facts about the Tenerife Plane Crash
The Tenerife disaster is considered as the deadliest air crash. The Tenerife disaster took place on March 27, 1977, at 17:06:56 local time, when two Boeing 747 airliners collided at Los Rodeos Airport on the island of Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, killing 583 people. The accident has the highest number of fatalities in the aviation history. The probable cause, cited by the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA, 1978), was the KLM pilot taking off without takeoff clearance. A miscommunication between the pilot and the air traffic controller is considered to be a major contributing factor of the accident. As a matter of fact neither plane should have been at Los Rodeos in the first place, which was not used to handling the traffic it had that day. They should have been in Gran Canaria, but a terrorist bomb attack by Canary Island separatists, The Canary Islands Independence Movement, closed the airport there. Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript showed that the KLM pilot was convinced that he had been cleared for take-off, while the Tenerife control tower was certain that the KLM 747 was stationary at the end of the runway and awaiting takeoff clearance. All 234 passengers and 14 crew members in the KLM plane were killed, and 326 passengers and 9 crew members aboard the Pan Am flight perished in the collision, primarily due to the fire and explosions resulting from the fuel spilled in the impact. Fifty-six passengers and 5 crewmembers aboard the Pan Am aircraft survived, including the Captain, First Officer, and Flight Engineer. Most of the survivors on the Pan Am aircraft were able to walk out onto the left wing through holes in the fuselage structure. Survivors waited for rescue, but it didn't come promptly as the firefighters were initially unaware that there were two aircraft involved and were concentrating on the KLM wreck some distance away in the thick fog. Eventually, most of the survivors on the wings jumped to the ground below. The only member of the KLM passenger manifest to avoid the disaster was Robina van Lanschot, a travel guide who lived on Tenerife and elected not to reboard the 747 when it was due to depart. |
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