What REALLY Caused the Tenerife Airport Disaster?! The WORST Aviation Accident in History

(somber music) - Two fully loaded Boeing 747s are taxiing through thick fog on the runway preparing for takeoff. In a few moments something will happen that will shock the world. How was this possible? Stay tuned. - Actually, I'm at... - 100, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10. - Many thanks to Curiosity Stream for sponsoring this video. The story of the Tenerife

airport

disaster

is full of frankly incredible coincidences. Let's see at the end of this video, if you can list all the things that if they had happened slightly differently, this

disaster

could have been avoided. The chain of events begins on March 26, 1977 when Pan Am Flight 1736, which is a Boeing 747-100 with call sign Clipper 1736, takes off from Los Angeles International Airport originally bound for New York to pick up some passengers. and then fly. to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.

This flight is chartered by Royal Cruise Lines and because it is a shorter flight, it is completely full on its last leg. And it is mainly elderly passengers who will board a cruise ship when they arrive in Las Palmas. Las Palmas is the capital of the Canary Islands and is located on Gran Canaria, which is one of the eight main islands of the island group. The Canary Islands are located about 100 kilometers west of the Moroccan coast, which makes them the southernmost area of ​​Spanish territory. And due to its tropical and subtropical climate, it is a true point of attraction for tourists mainly from Europe but from all over the world.

Now, in the Canary Islands, back in 1977, there was some political friction. A group called MPAIAC was fighting for the independence of the Canary Islands from Spain, or at least to get some recognition and attention from the central government. And he did so using both violent and non-violent political campaigns. And one of those campaigns is going to be the first piece of the puzzle that will lead to this disaster. In command of Pan Am Flight 1736 was Captain Victor Grubbs, 56. He was assisted by First Officer Robert Bragg, 38, and Flight Engineer George Warns, 46. They were a very, very experienced flight crew and they took over the flight in New York for the final leg to Las Palmas.

When the plane arrived in New York, it was delayed by about 45 minutes, so the outbound flight to Las Palmas was also slightly delayed. At 07:42, Clipper 1736 took off from New York's JFK International Airport and began flying over the Atlantic Ocean in the direction of Las Palmas. A total of 16 crew members and 380 passengers were on board. As the Pan Am plane descended over the Atlantic, another Boeing 747, a KLM flight 4805, was preparing to take off from Amsterdam to Las Palmas

airport

. This was also a shorter flight chartered by Holland International Travel Group and they were to take their passengers from Amsterdam, take them to Las Palmas and then turn around there, refuel the plane, load new passengers and then fly back. to Amsterdam as KLM flight 4806, so it was quite a long day for the crew involved.

In charge of these two flights was Captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten, who at the time was 50 years old and was working as Chief Flight Instructor on KLM's Boeing 747 fleet. This meant that he spent much of his operational hours in the simulator, instructing other pilots, and perhaps not as much time in the actual aircraft. One of the pilots who had been trained in this type by Captain Jacob van Zanten and who had, in fact, been examined by him just a few months earlier, was First Officer Klaas Meurs, who will fly alongside Van Zanten this afternoon. Flight engineer Willem Schreuder was also with them.

Willem Schreuder had a lot of experience and it was also known that he was not afraid to say

what

he thought, something we will see soon. At nine o'clock on March 27, 1977, KLM Flight 4805 took off from Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport with 14 crew and 234 passengers on board and began its descent towards Las Palmas. While these two planes were descending towards their destination, two young people entered the terminal building of the Las Palmas airport. They walked to the flower shop that was near the check-in counters. And they stood there for a while before turning around and hurriedly leaving the terminal building.

They left a bag behind and

what

no one noticed at that moment was that the bag was ticking. (timer) At exactly one o'clock in the afternoon, a receptionist inside Las Palmas airport received a phone call from someone claiming to be a representative of the MPAIAC, saying that they had planted bombs inside the terminal building, and they had exactly 15 minutes to clear the entire building. Almost immediately, 15 minutes later, the bomb that was placed inside the bag, next to the flower shop, exploded. This

caused

part of the roof inside the terminal building to fall and cause other widespread damage, as well as injuring four people inside the building.

But do you remember that the person he called said there were bombs, as in plural? Well, now the authorities had to assume that there was more than one bomb inside the building, so they had to search it. And therefore the decision was made to suspend all incoming flights to Las Palmas airport. Almost exactly at the same time as this was happening on the ground, KLM Flight 4805 arrived on holding pattern over Las Palmas. Initially, they were told to wait, but very quickly they were told that we don't know how long this hold is going to take or how long the cleanup is going to take.

So you have to detour to Los Rodeos airport in Tenerife. This meant a short 25-minute flight to Los Rodeos and, at 1:38 p.m., the KLM 747 landed on runway 30 at Los Rodeos airport. They taxied almost to the terminal building, as far north as they could on the platform, and parked there. While the KLM flight was diverting, Pan Am Flight 1736 had also entered a holding pattern a few thousand feet above the KLM plane. They heard the news of the bomb just as the KLM flight did. And they also asked if they could potentially wait instead of diverting because they also had a lot of extra fuel on board.

But like the KLM flight, the Pan Am flight was also told that no, we will not have any aircraft in our airspace, so please divert to Los Rodeos airport, so they did and landed at 2:00 p.m. :15, approximately 37 minutes. after the KLM flight and also taxied to the apron. And at this point, Los Rodeos airport had started to fill up with all the incoming flights that were supposed to arrive in Las Palmas, it was now being diverted, which meant that both the apron and the taxiways were becoming quite filled with diverted passengers. flights. Now let's talk a little about the airport to which these two planes have just diverted.

Los Rodeos Airport is located in the northeast corner of Tenerife. It is situated on a hill at an altitude of about 2,000 feet. Now Tenerife is dominated by the largest mountain in Spain, which is a volcano called Pico del Teide. And the Pico del Teide creates a rather unique metrological phenomenon in which these humid trade winds coming from the Atlantic are pushed against the mountainside. And when it does, it cools, the humidity drops and clouds or fog begin to form. And that can happen very, very quickly. This also means that on the south side of Tenerife it is almost always sunny.

So the type of climate you associate with going to the Canary Islands is southern. But in the north there is almost always humidity. It rains a lot, it is much greener, there is a lot of vegetation there. And because the airport is located at 2,000 feet altitude, it means that even reasonably high clouds, meaning clouds 2,000 feet high, when they arrive over the airport, they touch the ground. And this causes a very interesting phenomenon where it's not entirely fog, because when you think of fog, you think of something where the visibility stays more or less the same over time, maybe it's 500 meter visibility and it stays the same. .

But because what we have here are sometimes billowing clouds that come and go, you can have

really

big variations in visibility, where the visibility can be two or three kilometers in one minute and three minutes later, it drops to 300 meters. When these two planes arrived in Tenerife, visibility was good. It was a good day but that, very quickly, began to change. And that's what we'll see in a minute. Another thing about Las Rodeos Airport is that it had a very poor safety record. Between 1965 and 1968, there was, on average, one

accident

per year at or near the airport, claiming 98 lives.

And just a few years before this disaster, another serious

accident

had occurred. For this reason the decision was made to build a new airport in the southern part of Tenerife, where the climate was much better. This airport was actually paved and almost ready to go into operation in 1977, but due to some political infighting, that had not happened yet. This new southern airport actually had ground radar, but Tenerife North, Los Rodeos airport, did not have ground radar at the time of the accident. When the KLM flight parked next to the terminal building, Captain Van Zanten and his crew initially wanted all passengers to remain on board.

I suppose he probably hoped that this would only be a very short land delay and that they would be able to leave for Las Palmas almost immediately. But after about 20 minutes, it became clear that that was not going to be the case, and he decided that passengers could disembark, enter the terminal building, stretch their legs a little, maybe have a drink at the bar, and issued them. They handed out boarding passes so they could quickly get back on the plane if they were told Las Palmas had reopened. The Pan Am plane that arrived a little later wanted to do the same but was told that the terminal building was already completely full with all KLM passengers and that it would not be good to mix the two.

So the Pan Am crew decided to keep everyone on board, but asked for steps to be taken up to the plane so that the passengers could climb the steps, stretch their legs a little, and get some fresh air while they were there. wait. KLM passengers remained inside the terminal building for approximately two hours before boarding again. In the cockpit of the Pan Am, the crew tried to make the best of the situation. Captain Grubbs made a public address telling all the passengers that those who wanted could come in and visit the flight deck and he was guiding them around, showing them this wonderful airplane, this is the Boeing 747.

And the spirit was pretty good even though there were Been working for a long time at this point. In the KLM cockpit, however, the atmosphere was very different because Captain Van Zanten and his first officer and flight engineer began to talk about the recent changes in Dutch legislation on flight time limitation. Until recently, before 1977, there were fairly lax rules regarding how long a pilot could work, but recently those rules had changed dramatically. And now there were very clear limits on how long it was allowed to operate. And if you, as a captain, stepped outside of these limitations, you would face a judge and potentially serve jail time.

And this is what they were discussing because they could clearly see that if the ground delay was much longer, well, then they would have to go very quickly towards Las Palmas, have a minimum delay there in order to get back to Amsterdam. and lands within these limitations. This made the flight crew quite anxious. They did not want to stay stuck in Las Palmas. Captain Van Zanten had his wife and his two children at home. He specifically said that he was afraid that his wife would hear the news about the bomb in Las Palmas and she would be very, very worried if she knew he was there and would spend the night there.

So they were

really

looking for ways to minimize the delay as much as possible to get back to Amsterdam. And this is where Captain Van Zanten makes a decision that will have very dire consequences because he decides that if he is going to be sitting here on the ground, he might as well be carrying all the fuel he needs to fly to Las Palmas and fly back to Amsterdam. In this way he will minimize the time on the ground in Las Palmas. This is a very wise decision. This is something I completely understand myself because if you're stuck there, why not take advantage of the time to refuel?

But once you start fueling a 747, it's a pretty big operation, not something you want to stop. So I was betting that this delay would take them about an hour longer to be able to complete their fueling process and, more importantly, this fueling process would also make their plane 15% heavier. That would mean it would need a higher speed to take off later and also a longer takeoff distance. Only a few minutes after Captain Van Zanten has begun refueling his plane, he receives the news that Las Palmas has reopened so they can go fly over. The weather is still good, but now the lower clouds are beginning toappear from the hills and visibility worsens by the minute.

Captain Grubbs on the Pan Am flight heard the same message and asked to start, but was told that, unfortunately, the KLM flight is now refueling and there is not enough ground clearance to be able to maneuver his plane up and pass the flight. of KLM to enter the runway and reverse for departure. You will have to wait for the KLM flight to finish refueling before departing before being allowed to taxi and take off. When Captain Grubbs heard this, he came on the radio frequency and said, "How long will this fuel supply take?" And Captain Van Zanten responded from the KLM cockpit saying: "It will take another 20 minutes to half an hour." Captain Grubbs in the Pan Am cabin was not happy about this.

Instead, he sent the flight engineer and his first officer to physically measure whether or not they could pass the KLM plane on the apron. But when they returned, they confirmed that the distance was not far enough, it was less than 20 feet, but it was short, so they would have to sit and wait until the KLM finished refueling. At the same time, all passengers and crew had returned to the KLM plane and were now preparing for departure, all but one. Mrs. Robina Monique van Lanschot was an employee of the company that had chartered the flight in the first place.

And she had her boyfriend living in Tenerife, so, during the time on the ground, she had checked if she could stay there, along with him, instead of taking the flight back to Las Palmas. And that was granted. Then, when all the other passengers were boarding the flight, she was already in the car, leaving the airport, along with her boyfriend. And that is going to make her a very rare statistic. At 16:45 the KLM plane had finished refueling. And the last papers were delivered to the cabin. Captain Van Zanten and his crew were now trying to complete the pre-departure checklist, and you can hear on the cockpit voice recorder how Captain Van Zanten is actually trying to slow down.

And he would say things like, "Hey, give the guy a chance," indicating that the first officer was working on his Scan Flow at the same time the checklist was being read. But even though he tried to moderate the pace, a few minutes later, before completing the checklist, he was heard asking for permission to start, something the co-pilot normally does. So the fact that Captain Van Zanten was doing this himself indicates that he was trying to speed things up as well. Now, before we get into the accident sequence in this video, I just want to share a few words from my sponsor who is helping me make this type of content possible.

Now I know that you are watching my videos because you love learning new things and discovering the essential, nerdy details behind each story. And if that's true, you should seriously check out the sponsor of this episode, which is Curiosity Stream. Curiosity Stream is a high-quality subscription streaming service with thousands of great non-fiction stories and documentaries from some of the world's best filmmakers. I'm watching a series right now called "What Went Wrong?" And the last video I watched was the Greenfell Tower fire disaster, which was terrible, but also very interesting. If you think, Petter, that sounds really interesting, then consider supporting me by supporting my sponsor, go to the description, click on the link, which is Curiousstream.com/mentourpilot and the coupon code mentourpilot, that will give you a huge 25 % off the annual subscription fee, which is, wait for it, only $14.99 per year, which is incredible value for money.

Now let's go back to the video. At 16:56, the KLM crew had finished starting their engines and were ready to taxi. They switched to the ground controller's frequency and were cleared to taxi to the holding position of Runway 12. As they approached the holding position, they were transferred to the approach controller and the approach controller cleared them to enter the Runway. 12, go back and then turn. from the track through the third exit on your left. The first officer read this, but instead of reading the third exit, he read the first exit, which is easy to understand because the third and first can sound very similar, especially on radio frequency.

When the approach controller heard his misunderstanding, he changed his mind and changed the clearance to reverse all the way down Runway 12 until he reached the end of the runway, make a 180-degree turn, and then hold position. The first officer read this again, but just a few seconds later, Captain Van Zanten came on the same frequency and asked him whether or not he should turn left onto Charlie One, which is, once again, the first exit of the left side. . The approach controller said, "No, go ahead, go straight." And he said okay, he kept rolling down. But as they passed taxiway Charlie 4, which is the fourth exit on the left, Van Zanten turned back in the cockpit to his first officer and asked if he should turn there.

This can perhaps be interpreted as a bit of confusion in the KLM cockpit at the moment. But in my experience, when you're shooting in low visibility conditions, it's actually very, very difficult, you can see very little. It's actually a pretty scary situation where you only see a few lights. And in this case the central runway lights did not work either. Therefore, it is quite common for you as a captain to still ask your first officers to confirm the taxi's route and which turn it is on. If you have the slightest doubt about where you are or what you should do, you always ask, so it didn't seem very strange to me, but it's also possible that Captain Van Zanten is starting to think ahead and is starting to think. about the flight to Las Palmas, the possible delays in Las Palmas, and then the flight back to Amsterdam and the flight time limitations, and he might start to get a little distracted.

And if that's the case, then that might indicate that he's actually losing a bit of awareness of the current situation because he's thinking about the future, something we captains also tend to do, especially when trouble is brewing. And that might explain the actions you're about to take next. While the KLM plane is taxiing now, the visibility was indicated to be about 500 meters, which is pretty bad visibility. But some witnesses at the airport estimated that at times it could be as low as 100 meters, because now they were in that kind of situation that we were talking about earlier, where there were low clouds moving over the runway.

And this meant that visibility was sometimes very poor. And then one of these clouds could move away and visibility could improve significantly. And this was also indicated because the cockpit voice recorder indicates that the KLM cockpit wipers were on for a couple of minutes. But when the plane was reaching the end of the runway and began to turn, they turned off the windshield wipers, indicating that visibility was possibly a little better on that part of the runway. At the same time as the KLM plane backs off the runway, Clipper 1736, the Pan Am 747, receives its go-ahead clearance.

They start the four engines and request authorization for a taxi. And while they are now taxiing to the same holding position for Runway 12, Captain Grubbs signals to his fellow flight crew that he would actually like to stay off the runway to wait until the KLM flight has taken off instead. to retreat behind them. . Unfortunately, this is never actually transmitted to air traffic control because while he is talking about this, they receive several radio calls and also a frequency change. And when they change to the approach frequency, which is the same frequency that the KLM plane is on, the approach controller gives them clearance to enter runway 12, go back and then turn through the third exit to the left of the runway. runway, which is the same clearance that was originally given to the KLM plane.

Now, one might wonder if Captain Grubbs didn't want to enter the runway, if he wanted to wait behind, why didn't he insist on doing so? Well, that can possibly be explained by the fact that when we fly to countries where English is not the first language and when you talk to a driver who you can hear has a strong accent and maybe has difficulty with English, then sometimes The Flight crew members accept clearances that are not their first choice, just to ensure that no further confusion occurs when starting a discussion. And Captain Grubbs, in fact, in later interviews indicated that yes, that was definitely part of his thinking.

In any case, as the plane is now entering and reversing the runway, still in the fog, the cockpit discusses which exit they should take. Once again, they are not sure whether or not they should take Charlie One, which is the first exit on the left or the third exit on the left, exactly the same discussion the KLM crew had had before. Another really important thing to understand about Tenerife is the way the taxiways are built. So the third exit on the left side, coming from this direction, is actually what we call a high-speed detour from direction zero of runway 30.

This means it's a good detour when you come from that direction, but if you reversed the runway like these two planes did, it would require a very sharp 148-degree turn to the left, followed by another 148-degree turn to the right. to follow the parallel taxiway. This might be possible for a smaller aircraft, but for a large aircraft like the 747 it will be virtually impossible, especially on the second turn onto the taxiway. And that's why the flight crew members, when they discuss this, are actually talking about maybe the controller was referring to Charlie four instead of Charlie three, so the fourth exit is on the left.

This is a high speed detour from Runway 12 that offers a nice 35 degree detour from the runway and would make a lot more sense. Before the Pan Am crew could access the frequency and confirm which taxiway they should turn left onto, the approach controller came in and asked, “KLM 4805, can you confirm which taxiway you just passed?” " The first officer of the KLM flight returned and said, "Yes, we think we just passed Charlie Four," indicating that visibility was still quite poor. Now I want you to keep in mind that the approach controller made frequent pauses in its transmission.

He then started the transmission and then kept it there for a while until he continued, indicating that perhaps he would have to think a little about what he was about to say. And this is going to have disastrous consequences in a few minutes. At 17:03:29, the Pan Am first officer contacted the frequency and asked, "Do you confirm that we are taking off via the third exit?" really putting emphasis on the word third. The approach controller came in and said, "Say, exit third exit, one, two, three, third." Pan Am then said, "Okay, thank you." And this is important because the KLM cockpit voice recorder indicated that at that specific moment, there was complete silence inside the cabin, indicating that the flight crew members were listening to the frequency.

And there's a chance that what they thought they heard was that Clipper 1736, the Pan Am plane, was looking at the exit they were about to turn into and calling air traffic control just to confirm that that was the correct exit they were about to turn. they needed. take. In that case, this plane was about to go off the runway. In reality, Clipper 1736 was simply calling to confirm which taxiway they were about to take. They were much, much further down the track. A relaxed atmosphere reigned in the Pan Am cabin. They were making jokes in Spanish, saying one, two, three, as if indicating that they were going to take the first, second, third exit on the left side.

And they, too, at this point began to make their checklist before takeoff. The cockpit voice recorder of the Pan Am plane indicates that the pilots looked at the taxiways as they passed and shouted things like, "There's one, there's the second one." But, curiously, the third is not mentioned, which is the one through which they were authorized to leave. And the reason for this is possibly because they were listening to the ATC frequency just as KLM started receiving its departure clearance. They had never been to this airport before. They were probably very interested in knowing what kind of clearance this plane would get, since they were going to make the exact same flight.

And it is very possible that all the flight crew members after taxiing through the fog, when KLM was receiving their route clearance were concentrating on that clearance and missed the third taxiway, the one they were supposed to divert. He continued rolling down the track toward the fourth exit. At 17:03:47 the approach controller switches to frequency and says: "Seven one three five, report as you leave the runway." This is the wrong call sign for the Pan Am flight, butThey understand that it is for them and simply respond: "Seventeen thirty-six." This is common, a common way to accept, basically the same as saying wilco, but the problem here is that if you are on another plane thinking that your only obstacle on the runway just saw its detour and then you hear this message, you might misinterpret that as a confirmation that we have been cleared to the runway rather than a confirmation that we will report when we are cleared to leave the runway.

We will never know if this is what happened in the KLM cabin, but it is likely that something like this happened. A few seconds later, the approach controller comes back on frequency and sends a message to both the KLM flight crew and the Pan Am flight crew. And it says that the center lights are out of service. He did this in response to an earlier question Captain Van Zanten had asked about whether they could get light on the center line. And the importance of this is that without central lighting, the minimum visibility you must have to perform a takeoff actually goes up quite a bit.

It rises to more than 800 meters. This was discussed inside the Pan Am cockpit, but it was not discussed in the KLM cockpit and that could potentially be because at the point they were on the runway, the visibility could be much better than where the flight crew was. from Pan Am. 2,000 meters from the Pan Am plane, at the end of the runway, KLM Flight 8504 has completed its 180-degree turn and is facing directly in the direction of takeoff. As soon as the turn is complete, Captain Jacob van Zanten begins advancing his thrust sticks to stabilize them for takeoff.

But this is where his first officer, Meurs, steps in and says, "Wait a minute, we don't have any clearance." Captain Van Zanten reduces his thrust back to idle and simply says, "I know. Go ahead and ask." First Officer Meurs, in a bit of a hurry, switches to the frequency and says, "Hey, KLM 8504, we're ready to take off and uh, we're waiting for ATC clearance." By saying it this way, it can be interpreted that First Officer Meurs is requesting takeoff clearance and route clearance at the same time. Remember, they have not been cleared, which is how they are supposed to navigate when they depart;

They need to have that before they leave, but they also need to get takeoff clearance in order to begin the takeoff roll. The approach controller comes in, has been waiting for the KLM crew to request ATC clearance and gives them the following clearance, "KLM 8705", once again the wrong call sign, you are allowed access to dad's beacon, come up to maintain flight level nine zero, turn right after takeoff to proceed on heading 040 degrees to intercept radio three two five towards Las Palmas VOR. This authorization includes the word takeoff. In the mind of Captain Jacob van Zanten, who thinks that the runway is now completely clear and that this clearance gives him takeoff clearance and en route clearance, he responds with a "Yaaa" and begins advancing the thrust levers.

First Officer Meurs, who has to read this clearance, can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder, getting quite stressed and reads again: "Hey, received sir, we have clearance to go to Papa Becaon, flight level nine zero, right turn 040". degrees until we intercept three two five and we are already at takeoff." While I was still reading this authorization, Captain van Zanten said: "Come on, let's check the thrust" and advanced the thrust lever to the takeoff position. That's probably why he added : "We are now on takeoff" or "We are taking off." During the examination of the cockpit voice recorder it was impossible to hear exactly what he says.

But in any case, he definitely said under stress. 11 and in about 39 seconds the

worst

air disaster in

history

is about to occur. But at this point, there are still three things that could have prevented this from happening. Because when the approach controller listens to the first officer's reading, he interprets. “We're on takeoff” as if we were in takeoff position, which is what you expect them to say. So he says, “Okay,” then waits a few seconds and says, “Prepare for takeoff. I'll call them." But the Pan Am plane, which is still taxiing on the runway, thinks it hears that the KLM plane is about to take off.

So the first officer comes in and at the same time as the approach controller calls the frequency , also calls and says: "We are still taxiing on the runway, Clipper 1736." The problem is that those two messages when transmitted at the same time cause interference on the frequency. So, the only thing that can be heard in the KLM cabin is. "It's okay" from the ATC controller, and then a really loud noise comes out. Neither of the other two calling stations, nor the controller, nor the plane, could hear this loud noise. So this means that effectively KLM only heard "It's okay." good." The approach controller now thinks he has given a pretty clear message to the KLM plane and instead turns his attention back to the Pan Am plane.

And he calls them saying, "Dad Alpha 1736, confirm when you clear track". Clipper 1736 returns and says, "Affirm, we'll confirm when we're off the runway, Clipper 1736." While these messages are being sent on the frequency, the KLM plane is now accelerating down the runway. And as this speed increases, your visibility is likely to become worse. This requires more concentration and more attention on the part of the pilots, but one of the pilots, flight engineer Schreuder, actually has a little bit less workload at this point and listens to these radio messages. And at 17:06:30, he leans forward and says, "So they're not off the track?" Captain Van Zanten, who is deeply focused on the takeoff roll, doesn't hear what he says at first and says, "What did you say?" And flight engineer Schreuder says, "So, the Pan Am isn't clear of the runway?" Now Captain Zanten simply says in a very convincing voice: "Oh, yes!" And those were the last three things that could have prevented this disaster from happening.

In the Pan Am cockpit, the pilots have passed the third taxiway on the left where they were supposed to exit and are now taxiing toward the fourth exit. The atmosphere in the cabin is actually quite relaxed and they are making a bit of fun of the KLM captain and his perceived impatience at this point because they have been the ones waiting for him to finish refueling. At 17:06:38, 11 seconds before the collision, Captain Grubbs looks out the windshield and begins to see the headlights of the KLM plane. Initially, he thinks they're still, so he just says, "Oh, there it is." But very quickly, he understands that these headlights are not standing still and exclaims, "Oh, God, damn it, that son of a bitch is coming, he's coming!" First Officer Braggs responds, "Get off, get off." !" And Captain Grubbs just turns hard left, tries to get his plane into the grass and away from the oncoming 747.

He adds all the thrust but his plane weighs about 340 tons and won't accelerate as fast. The tallest The speed they managed to reach before the collision is about 20 knots. In the cockpit of the KLM, Captain Van Zanten heard V1 and was preparing to start turning his plane for takeoff when he suddenly sees the silhouette of the now turning. the Pan Am 747 right in front of him. He reacts by pulling his yoke all the way back, causing a tail slam to the rear of the plane, leaving about 20 meters of metal scrapes on the runway is a Dutch blasphemy. , godverdomme!" as the plane takes off momentarily just one second before the collision.

The number four engine located on the right wing of the KLM plane now penetrates the first class lounge of the Pan Am plane, which is the upper part of the bulk of the 747. The main landing gear breaks into the body while the left wing tears off the empennage and fin of the Pan Am jet, causing serious destruction. The KLM plane continues flying for about 150 more meters before falling back onto the runway, this time without the landing gear that had been torn off in the collision. The plane continues to glide for another two hundred meters, slightly to the right of the centerline, turning slightly clockwise, but as soon as it lands, a forest fire breaks out and all 248 passengers and crew on board are lost. .

Total chaos has occurred on Pan Am planes. Most of the passengers did not even have time to understand what happened. And in the cockpit, all three pilots managed to survive the initial impact. But when the flight engineer grabs the firewall handles on the roof to try to shut down the engines, he finds himself grasping at air because that part of the cabin roof had been torn off in the collision. All the passengers who were seated in the first class lounge were killed on impact and most of the passengers who actually survived managed to climb out of the holes in the body of the first class lounge under that lump and the cabin.

They could not open the emergency exit because the entire structure of the plane had been severely bent by the impact. And they were forced to jump, a jump of almost 20 feet or six meters, towards the asphalt. Some passengers also managed to escape from the rear of the plane through a hole in the roof, climbing onto the wings and from there descending to the asphalt. But of the 396 people aboard the Pan Am plane, only 61 survived the crash. The air traffic controller has no idea that this tragic event has occurred because remember, the airport is not equipped with ground radar and the visibility during this event was so poor, that he had absolutely no chance of seeing from the tower that this happened. . .

If this had happened a few minutes later, the visibility would have increased so much that it is unlikely that the event would have occurred in the first place. Anyway, one of the aircraft that was stopped on a taxiway reported that it could see flames on the runway. This prompted the air traffic controller to press the alarm button and sent the rescue team to the runway. But firefighters had to drive very, very slowly because of the fog to make sure they didn't hit someone on the tarmac. The first thing they noticed about the accident was an immense heat radiation as they approached the accident site.

Then, out of the fog, they could see the silhouette of this huge 747 now completely engulfed in flames: it was the KLM plane. They began to fight this fire, but also noticed that further down the runway there appeared to be another fire and assumed it was just a part of the KLM plane. Anyway, they split their forces in two and a portion of the firefighting force went down and very quickly they realized that they were looking at another Boeing 747 that was also on fire. Now they quickly realized that they couldn't do anything with KLM. At that time it was completely consumed by fire, so they put their forces into trying to salvage everything they could on the Pan Am jet and managed, through the use of copious amounts of water and foam, to secure a large amount of

aviation

fuel. who had gone out onto the runway and prevented it from catching fire, probably saving many people who were now evacuating from the Pan Am plane.

This horrendous accident shocked the entire world and the investigation began immediately. Fortunately, they were able to get their hands on the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from both planes relatively quickly. And in the final Spanish report, they put most of the blame on the KLM captain, Captain Jacob van Zanten. He claimed that the accident was

caused

because the KLM captain took off without ATC clearance, did not stop the takeoff when air traffic control told him to prepare for takeoff, did not stop the takeoff when the Pan Am plane reported that they were still on track. , and neither did Pan abandon takeoff when his own flight engineer asked him if the Pan Am plane was still on the runway.

Now the Dutch investigation team had a slightly different opinion than that expressed in the Spanish final report. They did not question the cause of the accident, which was clearly that the KLM crew had taken off without takeoff clearance. But instead, they dug a little deeper into why this happened. How could an experienced captain like Captain Jacob van Zanten have made such a decision? And they examined suboptimal teamwork among cabin crews both on planes and in air traffic control, possibly due to language barriers, but also examined whether or not the ATC controller might have been slightly distracted.

Some noise was indicated on the ATC tapes that would have indicated that the controller may have been watching a football game at the same time. They also examined psychological factors that might have influenced the crew in the KLM cockpit to make the decisions they did. I now know that many of the stories, films, videos and books that have been made about this horrendous accident have focused a lot of attention on the power distance in the cockpit of the KLM aircraft between the experienced training captain, Captain Jacob van Zanten and his first officer Meurs, and the fact that his first officer did notwould feel comfortable speaking out against his captain.

But that somewhat downplays the fact that First Officer Meurs was far from a new pilot. He had 9,200 hours. He was new to the 747 but he was a very experienced pilot. And he spoke. Remember when Captain Van Zanten wanted to start the takeoff roll as soon as he turned the plane around? It was First Officer Meurs who spoke and said, no, no, stop, wait, we need to get our ATC clearance. And that would indicate that he was definitely able to speak out against Captain Van Zanten. And the fact that Van Zanten started his takeoff roll while he was still reading the ATC clearance definitely bothered him, but it's very likely that he still thought that the runway ahead was clear, that there was no danger, and what he was doing Van Zanten.

It was a procedural error, but nothing more than that. And that's why I think it was very important for the Dutch investigation team to add their notes to this final report and start looking for the root cause of why this error occurred in the first place. Was it because Captain Jacob van Zanten was an instructor pilot who spent a lot of time in the simulator and was used to issuing his own ATC clearances? We will never know but what we do know is that these notes together with the final Spanish report ended up causing many discussions about crew resource management and the importance of discussions within the cockpit, but also about how important it is to have a phraseology very clear and unambiguous between air traffic control and the pilots so that these types of errors and these types of misunderstandings can never occur. .

For example, we now never use the word takeoff unless it is coupled with a takeoff clearance. Instead, we call it output. Also from this research emerged rules about the need for very clear markings on taxiways so that the flight crew could easily find them even in low visibility procedures, and the importance of using ground radar whenever possible. Now, this accident was, without a doubt, one of the darkest moments in

aviation

history

. But as an industry, we did what we always try to do: we took these hard-learned lessons and tried to use them to make the industry better and safer for everyone involved, just as we did after this accident, which actually It turned out to be the beginning of the end for Concorde.

Now, if you like what I do here on the channel, consider becoming part of my Patreon team and maybe join my next weekly meetup or get yourself a t-shirt. Have an absolutely fantastic day and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. (upbeat music)