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Now, today's article will be one of the sadder ones. As most of you already know from the title, it is about the infamous Tenerife airport disaster and the reason why it happened. For those of you who do not know, the crash involved 2 Boeing 747's colliding into each other shortly after takeoff, making it the worst ever airplane crash ever.
Now, let's start from the beginning. It all started on a rather uneventful afternoon, flights were going on normally at all airports in the canary islands but, all of a sudden, a bomb exploded in the main terminal of Gran Canaria Airport, which was one of the islands main airport. The bomb was planted by the Canary Islands Independence Movement which was a small terrorist group to force the Spanish government to make the Canary Islands an independent country. After the first bomb got set off, the authorities were worried a second one would go off so they decided to close the airport and divert all the flights to Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport, which is another airport in the Canary Islands and among those planes, was Pan Am Flight 1736, a Boeing 747-121 flight with registration N736PA which was en-route from Los Angeles International Airport to Gran Canaria via New York-JFK with 380 passengers and KLM flight 4805, a Boeing 747-206B flight with registration PH-BUF which was en-route from Amsterdam to Gran Canaria with 235 passengers.
Both planes landed at Tenerife successfully and parked at the gate. One KLM passenger that was supposed to fly to Gran Canaria escaped the end of her life as she left the Tenerife airport after landing as she was going to fly to Tenerife anyway because that was her final destination but everyone else that was on board was not as lucky as her.
After several hours, both of the flights were cleared to taxi and head to Gran Canaria with the Pan Am flight following the KLM flight and then turn right to take off at the parallel runway but as there was an airport rush, low visibility, and miscommunications, the KLM and Pan Am ended off taking off at the same runway from different sides and of course, that did not end very well. Everyone onboard the KLM and Pan Am flight lost their lives except for the lucky 60 people on the Pan Am flight that were seated at the nose of the airplanes. Flames were everywhere. The world's worst airplane crash had just happened, killing more than 500 people. Lucky survivors walked out with burns on their faces and body. It was an unforgettable aviation disaster.
The first investigators arrived at the scene after 3 hours, when the fire was put out. It was stated in the final report that the accident happened due to miscommunication. This unfortunate event led to the fall of Pan Am, the world's most leading airline back then.
Once again, this was all a long time ago. Do not be afraid of flying because there is less than 0.001% chance you will be in a plane crash, in fact, flying is the safest mode of transport but still, if you are flying during this ongoing pandemic, then be careful and be sure to send me some pictures on Twitter :D
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Written by: Sohail Sawlani
No copyright infringement intended.
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