Risk register · entry
Q3 · EngineeredTenerife collision
The deadliest crash in aviation history happened on the ground.
Tightly coupled systems where one small fault cascades and takes down the whole machine.
Why this quadrant
Two 747s were on one runway at an airport that should not have had them, diverted there by a bomb at Las Palmas. Fog cut visibility to under 100 metres, the KLM captain was running out of legal duty time, and his first officer's doubt about the clearance was not pressed. No single one of those was unusual. The runway had no ground radar to catch what they added up to.
The record
- Date: 27 March 1977, approximately 17:06 GMTcertain
- Total deaths: 583certain
- Survivors: 61, all from the Pan Am aircraft's forward sectioncertain
- KLM Flight 4805 deaths: 248 (all aboard)certain
- Pan Am Flight 1736 deaths: 335 of 396 aboardcertain
- Aircraft: KLM Boeing 747-206B registration PH-BUF; Pan Am Boeing 747-121 registration N736PAcertain
- Visibility reduced to under 100 meters in drifting fog at time of collisionlikely
- Las Palmas (Gran Canaria) airport bombing by Canary Islands separatists occurred that morning, forcing the diversion to Los Rodeoscertain
- Second airport, Tenerife South, opened 1978 partly in response to congestion exposed by the disasterlikely
- KLM compensation to victims' families reported in a range of roughly $58,000 to $600,000 per claimuncertain
Sources
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