If you’ve never heard of the Final Destination movies, the plots all go like this: A person has a premonition of some sort of disaster (airplane exploding, car accident, roller coaster accident, bridge collapse), goes crazy and gets out of it and brings several other people with them. Then all those people wind up getting killed in bizarre Rube-Goldberg ways (example). The world’s deadliest plane accident, on the runway at a small airport in the Canary Islands in 1977, seems like something from Final Destination when you consider the Rube-Goldberg series of events that allowed it to happen.
The two planes involved in the disaster were both Boeing 747s. One was a KLM flying in from Amsterdam, the other was a Pan Am flying in from Los Angeles. The pilot of the KLM, Jacob Van Zanten, was an icon. He had logged 11,700 flight hours in his years of service, was in charge of KLM’s flight training department, and even appeared in the company’s advertising. The Pan Am was Clipper Six, which was the first 747 to fly in regular passenger service, making the inaugural flight on January 22, 1970.
At 1:15 PM on March 27, 1977, a bomb detonated at Gran Canaria airport, the largest airport in the Canary Islands. The bomb itself only injured one person, but would indirectly kill hundreds. The airport was evacuated and all incoming flights were diverted to Los Rodeos airport on Tenerife Island.
Los Rodeos was a much smaller airport, not designed to handle this type of traffic. It was quickly overwhelmed. The taxiway was filled with parked airliners.
Since the taxiway was now a parking lot, it couldn’t be used. Instead, the plan was for KLM to travel from one end of the runway to the other, turn around and take off. At the same time, Pan Am was to turn into one of small taxiways to allow KLM to take off. Then Pan Am would turn right onto the main taxiway, go to the end of the runway and take off.
But then there were problems. Zanten wanted to refuel his plane, this took 35 minutes and in that time allowed a very dense fog to consume the airport, greatly reducing visibility. Pan Am captain Victor Grubbs considered going around Zanten, but there wasn’t enough clearance.
Both planes made their way on to the runway. At this point, Grubbs, Vanten, and air traffic control were completely blind from the fog. The only way for them to know their locations was over radio.
Pan Am was ostensibly supposed to turn into taxiway C-3, which would’ve required an impossibly sharp turn. But C-3 was unmarked and they wound up passing it, unable to see anything in the fog.
When KLM reached the end of the runway and turned around, Zanten immediately moved the throttles forward to takeoff. First Officer Meurs told him that they did not yet have clearance. Meurs radioed to ATC “We are now at take off”. ATC assumed this meant they were ready to take off once they were given clearance. He said “Ok, Stand by for clearance, I will call you”. Unfortunately, at the exact same time, Pan Am radioed "We're still taxiing down the runway, the Clipper 1736!". All that KLM heard was “Ok”. Zanten said “We’re going”, and KLM began taking off.
The Pan Am was still taxiing down the runway. ATC said “Papa Alpha report when runway clear”, Pan Am responded “Ok, will report when runway clear”. This exchange was heard by KLM and the first officer asked “Is he not clear, that Pan American”, Zanten responded “oh, yes”. So the last opportunity to avoid disaster was squandered.
When the Pan Am crew saw KLM’s lights, Grubbs said “There he is!”. They soon figured out that it was coming toward them at takeoff speed. Grubbs immediately tried to turn left onto the grass at full throttle to get out of the way. At the same time, KLM could now see Pan Am. There was no time to stop, so Zanten tried lifting off. The back end of the plane ran against the runway, slowing them down.
KLM was barely airborne and scraped the top of Pan Am’s fuselage. KLM then stalled, fell onto the runway, and burst into flames, killing all of the 248 crew and passengers aboard. Pan Am fared better, with 61 survivors including everyone in the cockpit and 335 deaths.
Los Rodeos was closed for 3 days as the debris was cleaned up. The only plane that was allowed to land was a USAF C-130 to transport the survivors to Las Palmas and then take the injured back to the US. Investigators had to arrive by boat. The airport only allowed in small planes for a while, before finally reopening on April 3.
In the ensuing investigation, Spanish, Dutch, and American authorities all were happy to blame each other.
The Spanish ATC were apparantly watching a soccer a game during all this and were using non standard language, such as saying “ok” to KLM. And when telling Pan Am to report when they were clear of the runway, they referred to it as “Papa Alpha” for the first time, instead of “Clipper”.
The crew in the American airliner were confused about where they were on the runway. When asked for confirmation about where they were supposed to get off, ATC said "The third one, sir; one, two, three; third, third one.". They identified C-1 and C-2, but C-3 was not marked and they could not see it in the fog, so they wound up passing it.
The captain of the Dutch airliner took off before receiving proper takeoff clearance. He also dismissed a radio message implying Pan Am was still on the runway. It’s suspected that Zanten was so eager to leave because of airline duty-time regulations and before the weather further worsened. Most fateful of all however was his decision to refuel. It allowed time for the fog to come in, it made the plane slower to take off, and created a massive source of fire which killed everyone. There was also the problem of hierarchy. The first officer thought something was wrong but was too intimidated by vastly senior Zanten to challenge him.
In the end, it would be the Dutch who took responsibility. KLM paid out $110 million in compensation to survivors and families of the dead.
To this day, Tenerife is the deadliest aviation accident in history. In many ways it was like the sinking of the Titanic. The 747 was a fairly new airliner at the time and the problem could be laid to weather and radio miscommunications. Also like Titanic, it led to an overhaul of regulations. ATC crew now had to read back instructions when giving permission, so crew knew that “okay” or “roger” only meant “message received”. They were also never to say “take-off” except referring to giving clearance (“cleared for take-off”), until that point, they could now only say “departure” (“ready for departure”). Lower ranking crew were also now urged to challenge their superiors.
1 year after the crash, a second airport was opened on Tenerife, called Tenerife-South. It had been under construction during the disaster because the existing was too prone to weather. Los Rodeos became Tenerife-North and got a ground radar system installed.
Let us run up the coincidences that led to this catastrophe
1. A terror bombing at another airport
2. A decision to refuel
3. Lots of fog
4. 2 crucial radio broadcasts occuring simultaneously preventing either from being heard
It’s just eerie. If this happened in a movie, it would be called ridiculous. But of course this was real life, and it was a horrible tragedy.