Crash entre deux Boeing 747 à Tenerife en 1977 : 583 MORTS

Le contrôleur était une bonne farce aussi avec son vocabulaire approximatif + faire prendre au deuxième une sortie aiguë
Les 2 auraient dû sortir en taxi et rejoindre le bout de piste toujours en file

Both aircarft were Boeng 747 airliners belonging to the Dutch KLM company and the PAN AM of the USA. On March 27th 1977, they crashed into each other. Out of 644 people, only 61 survived. It was in the Canary islands. Grand Canary airport was the airport for all the airliners transporting tourists from all over the world to the archipelago. But because of a terrorist attack in the airport and tensions about the island independence, they were all diverted to Los Rodeo airport on the nearby island of Tenerife. It was a smaller airport but still the best solution On March 27th 12 planes landed on the airport including 5 large airliners among which we have the 2 aircrafts involved in the accident. Panam 1736 plane came from Los Angeles while KLM flight 4805 arrived from Amsterdam. The airport had a small apron area inadequate to park all the diverted aircrafts so almost all of them parked on taxi ways instead. They used the runway for both taxis and take offs. Coordination was important. The fog descending on the airport aggraveted the situation. Panam captain didn't want to land at Los Rodeos as he wanted to stay in the air in a holding pattern and wait for Grand Canaria to reopen. He still was forced to land on the Los Rodeos airport. As soon as he received the message that the airport was reopened. The captain was ready for the take off btu the problem was that between the aircraft and the runway was the KLM boeing. He had to wait for the plane to take off first.
Jacob Van Zanten, captian of the KLM asked to the contorl tower for the permission to take off. In the same time, the panam also asked to take off. PAN AM captain had to make a 180 degrees turn to make it to he third exit, not easy maneuver for such a big aircraft on such a small area. Once the KLM was ready to take off they only neede the clearance from control tower. Control tower responded with takeoff routes instructions. MERS replaced the instructions and ended his statements by saying that they were now at takeoff. The captain then edded that they were going, to which the controller responded with :" ok " to confirm he received the message. The captain however misinterpreted it for a takeoff clearance and failed to receive the other part of the message that the controller sent to him. Controller said to be ready for takeoff, that he will calling him. All the planes at the airport used the same radio frequency to communicate with the control tower which led to signal interference. One of them was the PAN AM trasmitting the message that they were still taxing down the runway. Dutch crew failed to record this message as well. KLM captain thought he had an open way in front of way, pushed the throttles to take off. But PAN AM was still on the runway. Captain Grubs from the PAN AM missed the third taxiway exit because of the thick fog. He continued to go down the way. Controller told toe PAN AM to tell when they would leave the way as the KLM was ready to take off. Little did he knew that the KLM was already starting his way for the take off. They had no groudn radars to locate the plane on the runaway and the fog was too dense. PAN AM crew noticed the KLM only when it was reaching full speed toward them. He applied full speed to escape on the left KLM noticed the PAN AM but he was going too fast to stop so he tried to takeoff. But both planes were too close for this maneuver to succeed and they collided.
KLM was fully fueled before the takeoff with tanks full in the plane. The massive fire upon the impact killed everyone. The only survivors came from the PAN AM. All 234 passengers from KLM died + the 14 crew members. As for PAN AM, the death toll was 317 passengers and 9 crew members. The entire cockpit crew survived and some other passengers. 583 people died in total.