Tenerife

Name: Collins E. Mbasha

Student ID: 14014188
Airworthiness Coursework 1
Mister Iain Ritchie

Introduction
The Tenerife airport disaster was a fatal runway collision between two Boeing 747s
on Sunday, March 27, 1977 at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife,
one of the Canary Islands. The crash killed 583 people, making it the deadliest
accident in aviation history. As a result of series events beginning with organization
influences, environmental conditions, Communication failure that in time lead to
unsafe acts resulting this major accident.

It begins with an explosion at Gran Canarias Airport which caused many aircrafts to
be diverted to Los Rodeos Airport and among them were the two Boeing 747s the
KLM and Pan Am Flights, The KLM being ahead of the Pan Am. After a time of
waiting then the Gran Canaria reopens. During this time the KLM Captain decides to
fuel the aircraft to cover up for the time they have lost so that blocking the taxi way
for the Pan Am at the same time , a dense fog is developing at the airport, to the
highest degree reducing visibility.
After the KLM is done fuelling up, the captain requests to taxi the runway in order to
take off. The control gives them a go ahead to back taxi which means they are to taxi
to the end of the airport and make a 180 turn and take off, meanwhile the Pan Am is
to perform the same exercise but clear the runway at the 3rd exit, But as they are both
taxing the runway the Pan Am Captain looks at the exit C3 on the map and it seems
that the turn cannot be made due to the size of the aircraft and calls the tower again
to confirm if it was the first exit which they had already missed, meanwhile the KLM
is approaching the end of the runway. When the control tower tells the Pan Am to
take the third exit insisting 1 2 3 on your left, the captain then copies this as C4 since
they already had passed the 1st exit making C4 the 3rd exit on the left from their
current location.
As the KLM is making their turn at the end of the runway positioning itself for takeoff
and the Pan Am was taxing behind them slowing down due to the thick dense fog
looking for the exit C4. Now the KLM request ATC clearance and take off, the tower
gets back to them with ATC clearance. While the KLM first officer was reading back
the ATC clearance to the tower, the KLM captain released the brakes and said, We
gaan (we go), and began the take-off roll. After completing the ATCs read back, the
first officer said either, We are now ehtaking off or We are now at take-off.
(The tapes of transmission were not clear). The pan Am captain listening the radio
conversations and says that We are still on the runway and from the tower the
controller asks them to report when clear meanwhile the KLM is already speading up
to take off a kilometre ahead until with the Pan Am which was still taxing on the
runway.
As we can see on the figure below illustrates how the event went down at Los
Rodeos airport.

Conclusion
As we look up to the series of events from the back taxi we have difficulties in
weather condition which makes the 2 aircrafts to rely on the runway lights and radio
communication without any visibility between themselves and between them and the
control tower, but visibility is not a problem if communication is excellent. Now let us
look at it from a further point of view, the Bomb explosion that led to the diversion in
the beginning to a small congested airport where by so much time is lost by the
scheduled flights building stress to all parties the control tower handling the situation
at the airport and the Captain of the respective flights. Due to ambiguous language
fatigue from long journey and these stress factors KLM pilot blinded this novel
situation, he took it easy i must say despite the communication misunderstanding
that he was not cleared for takeoff, he should have checked that the Pan Am was
cleared off the runway, also his decision to fuel the aircraft at Los contributed to the
fatal accident by making the aircraft heavy thus a struggle to take off even when they
spotted Pan Am.

References
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6.

The Human risk week 2 pptx. slide 17

http://goflightmedicine.com/tenerife-disaster/
http://www.businessinsider.com/deadliest-plane-crash-in-history-2014-3?IR=T
Report on canary islands crash.pdf. pages 14,16,17 and 23
THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HUMAN PERFORMANCE.pptx. slide 13
Video Two Jumbos Collide In Canary Islands Crash of the Century mayday
season 3 Episode 4.
7. http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19770327-1