What went wrong that day:
1. A bomb exploded in the main airport in the Canary Islands, forcing all traffic to divert to Tenerife.
2. Las Rodeos wasn’t equipped to handle 747s.
3. There was only one runway at Las Rodeos.
3. it was a Sunday, so only two air traffic controllers were working.
4. The Pan Am wanted to take off first, but was blocked by the KLM plane and could almost get around it, but there was just a few feet too little of space.
5. Because all the 747s weren’t backed up, the planes couldn’t go down the taxi runway. They had to go down the main runway, turn around, and then take off.
6. The airport didn’t have ground radar.
7. The ground lights weren’t working.
8. It was the end of the month and the KLM crew was under a lot of pressure not to fly too many hours in the month.
9. A family from the KLM flight had wandered off, thereby putting even more pressure on the KLM.
9. To save time later, the KLM decided to refuel—and filled it all the way to the top, which is usually not done. It made the plane very heavy, which became a key factor later.
10. Everyone on both planes had worked a long day and was tired.
11. The Pan Am misinterpreted the order to take the third exit.
12 A heterodyne (simultaneous transmission) blocked crucial information that the
the Pan Am was still on the runway.
13. The fog rolled in and the planes couldn’t see each other.
14. The pilot of the KLM was using nonstandard terminology and there appeared to be some miscommunication about what was meant by “takeoff.”
15. The crew of the KLM was so busy with pre-takeoff checks that all but the navigator missed crucial information.
16. 747s aren’t particularly maneuverable on the ground, so the Pan Am didn’t have sufficient time to get out of the way.
17. The one way to survive when the planes saw each other was for the KLM to take off over the Pan Am. Without the added gas weight, that might even have worked.
Sad. Incredible, but sad.
Of all that list, the very limited visibility was in my mind, the most decisive, as it has been in so many aircraft crashes.
pong
Few people ever bring up the CIIM Movement that started this whole mess to occur.
CIIM was created by some local guy there in the Canary Islands...to separate them from Spain and be some kind of independent nation. The group never drew much in terms of numbers, and they weren’t violent until January of 1977 (their first bomb episode was a airline office in Las Palmas). This 2nd bomb episode at Las Palmas was just a small bomb-like device at a flower shop in the airport, wounding eight.
Oddly, after this accident at Las Rodeos, CIIM is on a short-life and drawing a lot of attention. In less than two years, they put out a message that their goal of ‘struggle’ is finished.
No one has ever gone in and asked how CIIM was financed (they operated strangely enough out of Algeria). My humble guess is that a secret service unit from some Warsaw Pact country funded and used them....and after the accident, way too many people were angry over things, and financing CIIM simply dissolved away. It would be interesting today to go back and dig into this aspect of the group, who triggered the aircraft accident.
Correcting my numbering—What went wrong that day:
1. A bomb exploded in the main airport in the Canary Islands, forcing all traffic to divert to Tenerife.
2. Las Rodeos wasn’t equipped to handle 747s.
3. There was only one runway at Las Rodeos.
4. it was a Sunday, so only two air traffic controllers were working.
5. The Pan Am wanted to take off first, but was blocked by the KLM plane and could almost get around it, but there was just a few feet too little of space.
6. Because all the 747s weren’t backed up, the planes couldn’t go down the taxi runway. They had to go down the main runway, turn around, and then take off.
7. The airport didn’t have ground radar.
8. The ground lights weren’t working.
9. It was the end of the month and the KLM crew was under a lot of pressure not to fly too many hours in the month.
10. A family from the KLM flight had wandered off, thereby putting even more pressure on the KLM.
11. To save time later, the KLM decided to refuel—and filled it all the way to the top, which is usually not done. It made the plane very heavy, which became a key factor later.
12. Everyone on both planes had worked a long day and was tired.
13. The Pan Am misinterpreted the order to take the third exit.
14 A heterodyne (simultaneous transmission) blocked crucial information that the
the Pan Am was still on the runway.
15. The fog rolled in and the planes couldn’t see each other.
16. The pilot of the KLM was using nonstandard terminology and there appeared to be some miscommunication about what was meant by “takeoff.”
17. The crew of the KLM was so busy with pre-takeoff checks that all but the navigator missed crucial information.
18. 747s aren’t particularly maneuverable on the ground, so the Pan Am didn’t have sufficient time to get out of the way.
19. The one way to survive when the planes saw each other was for the KLM to take off over the Pan Am. Without the added gas weight, that might even have worked.
Sad. Incredible, but sad