The Tenerife Airport Disaster: Aviation's Worst Nightmare

this video is brought to you by manscape keep yourself well groomed with the performance package kit from manscape more on them in just a bit the canary islands are one of europe's tourist playgrounds the tropical paradise situated off the western coast of africa is visited by more than 12 million tourists a year attracted by its spectacular scenery and climate not to mention its beautiful beaches in aviation circles however the canaries are known for something else something far darker it is the site of the deadliest airplane accident in history in 1977 583 people were consumed in a massive farb or the end result of a tragic chain of events that included criminal activity negligence miscommunication and just plain bad luck the accident highlighted the unsafe practices in use by the airline industry around the world prompting a wave of procedural and safety changes that are still felt today over 40 years later this is the story of an ordinary day in paradise quickly descended into unimaginable horror and how the aviation community came together to make sure that nothing like it would ever happen again the economy of the canary islands is heavily dependent on tourism making up over one-third of its gdp annually so it makes an attractive target for anyone looking to make a political statement on march 27 1977 the armed wing of the canary islands independence movement which sought to liberate the islands from spanish rule planted a bomb in a florist shop at gando airport on the island of gran canaria the device exploded at 1 15 pm injuring eight people though far worse carnage was avoided by the terrorists warning the airport in advance by phone giving authorities time to evacuate most of the airport before the bomb went off the terrorists had warned of a second device planted somewhere in the airport so it was decided to close gando to all traffic while the premises were searched this presented a logistical nightmare for air traffic controllers who had to divert the long line of incoming aircraft to other airports the nearest airport to gando was los ridaius airport on the nearby island of tenerife los redes was a small regional airport with only one runway and taxiway and it wasn't used to accommodating large international airliners now found itself jammed with five of them including two boeing 747s the biggest of them all the boy 747 was the original jumbo jet first launched in 1970 there were massive beasts 230 feet long 60 feet high with a wingspan of almost 200 feet and a maximum takeoff weight of 367 tons each one could carry well over 300 passengers by 1977 over 300 of these bear moths were in service around the world each one specially constructed at the massive boeing factory in everett washington by volume the largest building in the world the first 747 to arrive at las redes was operated by klm royal dutch airlines the national airline of the netherlands flight 4805 was a charter flight for a dutch travel company carrying 249 people from amsterdam to the canaries the second plane belonged to pan am world airways or just pan am flight 1736 had taken off from los angeles 13 hours earlier with a stopover in new york and had 396 people on board most of the retirees who were part of a tour group that was due to meet on a cruise ship on gran canaria this particular airplane was the first 747 to go into commercial service back in 1970 christened by first lady pat nixon now both of these planes and all the others were jam-packed into a small airport that was completely unequipped to handle them because it was a sunday afternoon normally a light traffic day at the airport only two air traffic controllers were on duty the small primitive terminal was overwhelmed by hundreds of passengers that flooded it so many of them that passengers on the pan am plane were not permitted to leave the airplane because there was no room for them in the terminal a few hours later after a thorough search of gandu airport revealed no additional bombs authorities reopened the airport now the controllers at las rodeos had to get all of these planes off the ground and long to gran canaria only half an hour's flying time away but now they faced another problem the weather bostrodes airport was situated 2000 feet above sea level in the shadow of the volcano mount tade warm air from the atlantic ocean hits the mountain and cools down rapidly forming clouds at 2000 feet these clouds become thick fog known by airline pilots as soup controllers couldn't see the planes they were directing and the pilots in the planes couldn't see each other everyone had to rely on radio communication to keep track of everyone else at 506 pm the air traffic controllers in the tower heard a series of loud booms a plane circling overhead reported to the tower that they saw fire and wreckage on the runway to the horrified controllers it was their worst nightmare a plane under their control had crashed emergency crews found the klm jumbo destroyed on the runway it had exploded into a terrific fireball triggered by the full load of fuel on board rescuers weren't expecting to find survivors so they were shocked when some passengers began moving towards them but these weren't dutch passengers they were americans and they weren't coming from the wrecked plane but from further down the runway the emergency crews headed in that direction for 500 meters and found to their horror the pan-am plane in flames as well there could be little doubt to what had occurred the two jumbo jets had collided with each other on the runway the collision had ripped the pan am plane apart and set it on fire eventually the entire plane would be consumed except for the left wing the next morning newspapers and television networks around the world showed the carnage nothing like this had ever happened in the history of aviation two planes each carrying hundreds of people crashing into each other like this the death toll was catastrophic only 61 people on board the pan am plane survived the accident against 335 people killed either in the collision or post-crash fire on board the klm plane the destruction was even more total only one woman who happened to live on tenerife and decided not to get back on board the plane was still alive out of 249 people who had flown down from amsterdam the rest were killed instantly when the plane exploded including over 50 children in total 583 people were killed the deadliest aviation accident in history there were so many dead that the island of tenerife ran out of caskets and had to have more shipped from the spanish mainland the disaster shocked the world and shook public confidence in both the airline industry and the boeing 747. everyone had the same question how on earth could this happen [Music] air crash investigators from spain the united states and the netherlands descended on tenerife beginning their investigation with the wreckage of the two planes on the runway they quickly located what are colloquially known as the black boxes carried by both aircraft the black boxes which despite the name usually painted a high visibility orange consist of the flight data recorder or fdr which records flight parameters such as speed altitude and the positions of some control surfaces and the cockpit voice recorder or cvr which recalls the last half hour of conversation between pilots in the cockpit the black boxes as well as interviews with air traffic controllers and the survivors of the pan am plane would hopefully help investigators piece together what happened on the runway the first question investigators had was why both planes were on the runway at the same time the answer incredibly was that they've been ordered to do so by air traffic control the tarmac where the airplanes parked at the airport was completely full with so many planes that it forced controllers to park planes on the taxiway the roadway the planes used to get from the tarmac to the runway in order to clear the log jam controllers instructed the klm plane to make their way down the length of the runway executing a 180 degree turn and waiting for clearance to take off to save time the pan amplain was instructed to follow the klm plane leave the runway at the third exit charlie 3 to get back onto the taxiway past the parked planes making their way to the entrance of the runway behind the klm plane the problem was the charlie 3 exit would have required the 747 to execute two hairpin turns in excess of 90 degrees something the captain of the pan amplain didn't think it was possible for him to do and investigates agreed instead the captain thought the controller must have meant for him to turn off the runway at charlie iv a much easier turn-off for the big plane the problem was compounded by the poor english and thick accent of the spanish-speaking controllers as well as the fact that the controllers were using non-standard terms such as the third exit instead of specifying what exit they wanted by name the pan am cockpit crew which had survived the accident reported that the klm plane had tried to take off before they'd cleared the runway and crashed into them that seems to line up with the position of the wrecked planes but the air traffic controller reported that he had not cleared the klm plane for takeoff at any point before the accident so well what went wrong well we will answer that question in just a moment but first a quick word from today's sponsor manscaped manscaped if you're unfamiliar is a company aimed specifically at men who understand the value of being well groomed think of them as a hardware store just for your body landscape has this great performance package kit that they've sent me with lots of tools and products essential to the modern man so let's take a quick tour of course this is the lawn mower 3.0 it's got advanced skin safe technology which you know when this is designed to shave that is certainly a good thing nobody likes nicks 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boxer briefs so if you want to start looking good from head to toe with no stones left unturned head to manscape.com and get 20 off plus free international shipping and those two gifts when you use the promo code geo20 again that's manscaped.com promo code geo20 or just follow the link in the description below the kale employee was captained by iaco vanzanten not only was vanzenton one of the airline's most experienced pilots with over 11 000 flying hours he was also entrusted with the responsibility of training new pilots and was even featured on the airline's advertising it didn't seem likely that a pilot with this much experience would make such a fundamental mistake as to take off without permission however what the cvr recording revealed was that experienced or not captain vanzanten was a man under stress the diversion and long layover in los redeas had eaten up a lot of time and now the crew threatened to run afoul of the dutch civil aviation authorities new regulations that restricted the number of hours a pilot was able to fly before having to take a mandatory break instituted for safety reasons to prevent pilots from flying fatigued it threatened harsh penalties for any pilot that violated them including the loss of their license the klm crew still needed to fly to gando unload their passengers load a new set of passengers and fly back to amsterdam if they ran out of time they'd have to cancel the flight forcing the company to put passengers up in a hotel room at their expense something the bosses at klm would not look kindly on vansantenfor the captain's worries about duty time limits had an effect on everything that happened that afternoon on tenerife while he was on the ground el los redeos vanzanten decided to refuel the 747 there instead of waiting to do it at gando but it backfired when the airport at gran canaria reopened sooner than expected standing the klm plane at los redeos until the refueling was complete to make things worse that pan amplain was stuck behind the klm while it refueled because there wasn't enough clearance to pass them the klm plane had to wait longer while passengers were reloaded and even longer when some passengers went missing inside the terminal and needed to be located all the while the pan am plane was stuck behind them needing another 12 feet of space in order to get past them if the positions of the two planes had been reversed the pan am would have left over an hour before the klm plane did and the accident would have never happened by the time the klm plane was finally ready to leave the fog had settled in over the airport reducing visibility to less than half a mile barely above safe minimums but investigators knew that neither the weather nor the captain's eagerness to get off the ground were the sole reason for the accident after all van santon was still an experienced pilot right well that was part of the problem vandanton was perhaps too experienced as the head of klm's training division he spent almost all his time in a simulator training junior pilots in fact the flight from amsterdam was the captain's first flight in a live airplane in three months the key difference between a simulator and a real plane is that there's no air traffic controller in a simulator whoever is conducting the training acts as the controller and gives permission for the other pilot to take off in other words venzant was used to an environment where he could take off as soon as he was ready to go he didn't need to get clearance from another person so vanzant and taxi down the runway made a 180 degree turn at the end of it and stopped so the captain is ready to leave he needs to leave now if he has any chance of making his flight back to amsterdam that day in the thick fog he couldn't see the pan am plane ahead of him and the controller who you remember is speaking a thick spanish accent is regularly using the word take-off in communication with the pilots despite not wanting them to actually take off yet in vansanton's mind he hears the word take off from the controller and he's ready to take off so he doesn't think anything obvious as he advances the throttle of his plane's four engines and begins his take off role investigators were still confused though the dutch crew might not have been able to see the american airplane but they could still hear them both planes are on the same frequency and communicated with each other and air traffic control throughout the day the investigators clearly heard on the air traffic controllers tape him saying to the klm crew okay they also heard on the pan am plane's cockpit voice recorder the co-pilot announcing over the radio that his plane was still taxiing down the runway either message should have clearly indicated to van zantin that he did not have permission to take off that the runway wasn't clear and that he should stop so why didn't he the answer unfortunately comes from the limitations of the radio technology involved the planes were equipped with standard two-way vhf radios they work similar to walkie-talkies one person pushes the button and talks everyone else has to listen and wait for their turn to speak the problem comes when two people key the microphone at exactly the same moment known as stepping on each other when that happens neither person's message is heard replaced by a high-pitched squeal that is called a heterodyne this is what happened at tenerife both critical messages that would have stopped the klm plane and its tracks were blocked the only word vanzanten heard was the air traffic controller saying okay with this disastrous miscommunication the accident was now inevitable the pan am crews still looking for their exit suddenly saw the lights of the klm plane coming towards them at high speed alarmed they pushed their plane to full throttle and made a hard left turn to try and get out of the way at the same time benzanten spotted the pan am plane in front of him he immediately pulled all the way back on the nose to try and take off but they were stuck in a no-win situation too fast to slow down in time too slow to get off the ground klm's tail scraped along the ground for almost 100 feet before the plane finally got airborne but it was too late the nose and front landing gear cleared the pan am plane but the engine's main landing gear and lower fuselage slammed into the other 747 at a speed of 160 miles per hour tearing deep gashes in the american plane's fuselage and setting it on fire the klm plane was too damaged to stay airborne and came crashing down 500 meters further down the runway where it exploded in a tragic twist of fate the extra 40 tons of fuel that the dutch plane had taken on earlier had come again to haunt captain vanzanten the extra weight made it harder for the plane to take off it needed to use more runway to get in the air while there is no way to know if they'd have cleared the pan amplain if they didn't have the extra fuel on board it does seem likely in addition the extra fuel made the post-crash explosion of fire worse ensuring everyone on board was killed [Music] investigators had one more question captain vanzanten wasn't flying by himself that day there was another qualified pilot the first officer sitting right next to him as well as the flight engineer either one of them should have been able to spot the elementary mistakes that the captain had made so why didn't they say anything it seems that the culture of the industry must share some blame here airline crews of the time followed a strict hierarchical structure akins the military in the cockpit the captain was treated the same way the captain of a navy ship was akin to a god on earth his word was law not to be challenged by a subordinates because he knew better than them as a result the other crew members tended to defer to the captain's judgment and were reluctant to challenge him this seemed to be what happened on board the dutch plane vanzanten was so senior so experienced that the first officer and flight engineer assumed that the captain knew what he was doing he had treated them abruptly when they pointed things out earlier and they seemed not to want to anger the already stressed out captain by questioning him further but airline captains are human like everyone else and capable of making mistakes 999 times out of a thousand the mistake the captain made would have been harmless but on this unfortunate day his mistake came at the end of a chain of events that propelled over 600 people towards disaster if any one of them hadn't occurred the bomb at the main airport the small overcrowded alternative airport the blanket of fog or the critical radio malfunction then neither would the accident but it had and the question now on everyone's mind was how to prevent it from happening again [Music] few accidents have resulted in more safety recommendations and improvements than the disaster at tenerife the accidents demonstrated the need for clear concise communication between pilots and air traffic controllers so a lot of work was done to standardize training in radio communication for both the use of such colloquial terms as ok or roger aren't acceptable when given an instruction by air traffic controller pilot should acknowledge it by repeating the instruction bag verbatim so that everyone is on the same page greater emphasis was placed on air traffic controllers and pilots who are serving international destinations to learn and communicate effectively in english consider the language of aviation around the world one of the most subtle lessons applied after tenerife is that controllers only use the word takeoff when they are actually giving a pilot clearance to do so and at all other times they use the word departure instead the other big lesson that was learned from the disaster was that the relationship between members of the cockpit crew needed to be looked at there wasn't much point in having more than one pilot up there if one person was making all the decisions and the others were just pushing buttons the entire crew needed to work together as a team cross-checking each other for mistakes and stepping in to correct them when necessary this was reinforced by a number of accidents over the following years all of them caused by an experienced captain making a mistake and his junior colleagues not correcting him what the industry came up with was something called crew resource management or crm crm largely does away with a hierarchical power structure seen at tenerife in a modern cockpit the captain and first officer more or less work as equals regardless of their experience level even the most junior of pilots is encouraged to speak up when they believe something is wrong and captains are taught not to dismiss this or take it as an insult as we approach the 50th anniversary of the disaster at tenerife we can say with confidence that the safety improvements made in the wake of the disaster have made flying safer since the introduction of crm training there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of accidents caused by pilot error as crew members point out each other's mistakes and prevent them from becoming catastrophic many pilots credit crm training with helping to save them when things go wrong most famous of these is u.s airways flight 1549 which landed in the hudson river in new york city in 2009 after both engines stopped working captain chesley sullenberger and first officer jeffrey skulls worked together to save the lives of everyone on board the stricken aircraft which both pilots credited to the extensive training they'd received on how to cooperate with each other in an emergency in the canary islands not much has changed the islands are still a top vacation destination for european holiday makers who continue to travel there in their millions still governed by spain the terrorist group that helped trigger the accident on tenerife with their ill-timed bomb never did manage to get their violent revolution off the ground on tenerife a new airport tenerife south opened in 1978 to help relieve some of the congestion around the airport on gran canaria the new airport was built at sea level making it less likely to be obscured by fog los rodeos airport now known as tenerife north mainly handles regional flights into island hops by small airplanes and is rarely visited by the modern incarnation of jumbo jets there are memorials to the victims of the disaster in both amsterdam and in california and in 2007 relatives of those killed in the crash helped dedicate a memorial on the island of tenerife but the disaster also has the unfortunate distinction of being commemorated in our statistics obsessed culture as the deadliest accident in aviation history a figure that the industry hopes is never surpassed the true tragedy of tenerife is that it marred one of the most beautiful places on earth with its horror and that it plunged innocent people who were visiting for a good time into terror and hellfire if there is a silver lining it's that thanks to the safety recommendations instituted afterwards such an accident is unlikely to ever happen again something that those of us who fly on planes regularly should take comfort in so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching you

Channel: Geographics

Views: 341,213

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Id: 98A4oN7Ii08

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021