Tenerife Airport Disaster: The tragic story of the world's deadliest plane crash

March 27, 1977. Canary Islands, Spain. Two large commercial planes collide head-on on a runway at Los Rodeos airport, north of Tenerife. In the middle of the thick fog, 583 people, most of the tourists on holiday, meet their end in the violent crash. How could something like this happen?

Several elements converged to allow this disaster to happen. The first of these was a bomb planted by the Canarian Independence Movement in Gran Canaria Airport. Flights are forced to detour to the much smaller Los Rodeos Airport, on the island of Tenerife.

The flights destined to Gran Canaria caught Los Rodeos Airport unprepared and amid the chaos two Boeing 747s ended up on the same runaway turned taxiway. One from the Dutch airline KLM and the other from Pam Am that had arrived from New York.

Due to the fog, none of the crew noticed the presence of the other aircraft in time. They only notice at the very last moment, but it's too late to avoid tragedy: The Pan Am flight tries and fails to maneuver to prevent the crash as the KLM plane tries to take off.

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The tragedy is unavoidable. The KLM flight has no space to take off and crashes straight into the Pan Am passenger jet.

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There are no survivors among passengers and the crew of the Dutch KLM flight. Passengers in the front part of the Pan Am Boeing 747 manage to save their lives. There are only 61 survivors.

The Spanish press doesn't take long to point the cause of the disaster to human error. Miscommunication between the air traffic tower and the KLM crew originated the tragedy.

As explained at the time by Spanish newspaper El País, an investigation by civil aviation authorities reveals that the control tower had approved the KLM Boeing 747 flight plan. However, the Dutch pilot understood that he was cleared for immediate takeoff.

El País writes that KLM flight captain Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten gave the order to go and was already accelerating through the fog with 248 passengers and crew onboard when tower control told him to wait clearance to start departure.

The collision unleashed hell on Earth on the runaway of Los Rodeos airport. Witnesses claim to have scared for life. One photographer told to El País that he prefers “not to remember”.

However, this wasn't the only time death descended upon Los Rodeos airport: A Spantax company plane with 155 people crashed in 1972, killing all on board. Once again, fog was one of the main factors for tragedy.

The airfield in Tenerife was the location of another tragedy in 1989, when a Dan Air Boeing 727 from Manchester crashed, killing all of its 146 occupants. Here you can see a memorial for those who perished in the accident.

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Unsurprisingly, the airfield in Los Rodeos gained a bad reputation and was phased out by the Tenerife Sur airport. Los Rodeos was eventually upgraded and reopened in 2003, though most of the heavy duty and international flights are done by Tenerife Sur.

The Los Rodeos tragedy in 1977 was a real shock in many parts of the world, and the aviation industry in particular. New regulation was implemented to make flying more secure.

What happened in Tenerife in 1977, argue the experts, could not happen today: There are greater precautions in case of fog, better radars and much more clear and standardized communication between air traffic control and airplane pilots. Misunderstandings like the one that occurred in Los Rodeos are almost impossible.

The truth is that while the 1977 Tenerife Airport Disaster is the deadliest civil aviation-related accident in history, ultimately it shaped air travel for the better.

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