The Tenerife Airport Disaster: Aviation's Worst Nightmare
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Source/Further reading:
www.telegraph.co.uk/content/d...
www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/u...
cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/9...
www.dailyherald.com/storyimag...
lh3.googleusercontent.com/pro...
i.insider.com/5333256b69beddd...
qphs.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...
peterstenerifecrashpage.files...
i.pinimg.com/originals/70/a6/...
• Video
www.salon.com/2002/03/28/hete...
• VFX Tenerife
• US Airways Flight 1549...
Collision on Tenerife: The How and Why of the World's Worst Aviation Disaster by Jon Ziomek, Post Hill Press, 2020
Aircraft Accident Report, Air Line Pilots Association, 1978: archives.pr.erau.edu/ref/Tener...
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14.99 a quarter for a new head (fnarr) minus what the bearded one said.
Please use the metric system, so the whole world could understand you.
That's about 3 beers.
Plane bad luck
har dee har
I find it disrespectful for YT Premium members to put sponsors in video
"Every safety rule we follow is written in the blood of someone else."
Exactly, we as humans are reactive and not proactive. Especially when it comes to safety and procedures. They are bad about this in the fire service. It is extremely annoying.
Damn thats edgy
Words to live by.
I wish I could like your comment 💯 times!
I think part of the issue is people aren’t inherently able to predict what problems might occur before they happen
@@PigglyWigglyDeluxe You can't predict people when they aren't predictable
-Me
Bear in mind the fog was so thick you couldn't see a burning 747.
Gannicuuuus
Shit happens, unfortunately.
Yes but the pilot who caused the accident couldn’t be bothered to ask if the runway was clear.
Couldn't see 2 burning 747s
@@oldschoolman1444 classy
Violate flight hours: Get in trouble.
Don't violate flight hours and it costs the company money: Get in trouble.
This is the same in every industry: the safety rules that are supposed to protect workers are always used as weapons against them.
Thousand thumbs up. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Bullseye.
You would think that people would have more common sense in this world.
@@everydayhero5076 Many things are common, common sense isn't one of them.
Profits over people. Exploited employees are the backbone of almost every business that wants to stay in business.
About to board a plane in 40 minutes, thanks for this gem!
1 in 40mill ur fine enjoy the flight
I've built an ultralight plane recently, no license, never been in a plane before, but I plan on flying in the next few days,
@@sirsackolis5203 thank you good sir, natural selection has been resting too long. I salute you
Yh they the passengers of these planes thought the same. Unfortunately for them it was their worst nightmare. 🙏xxx
@@northlandgaming8460 and I salute you, I would want to go in a ball of fire, why die in a boring way, like the cancer invading my body😂
That face when you’re a terrorist group trying to “send a message” without killing people and you end up indirectly killing hundreds.
I do remember reading somewhere, the leader of the group saying that the deaths are not on his conscience.
I must say that I took part in the crash aftermath. I with 30 others the US Army Graves Registrations detail was sent to Dover AFB Delaware. I spent 5 weeks working on the deceased. I was one of the last to leave the mortuary. This was my first time dealing with such a large amount of Deceased due to accidents. It was 12-16 hrs a day no days off. We were guarded and kept out of the press and AF personal view. It was a challenge for all involved. Many asked to leave and after a short while, we were about 8-10 left. I will say that we did great work and stood the test. I left the military the next year but have taken part in other such terrible events since then. Now I am 65 yrs old and too old to serve other than a paper keeper. I spent most of my life in Law Enforcement and still kept my Morticians Lic. I must say for me it's as if it was yesterday and my friends who stayed to the end feel the same way. We actually had a few from KLM and were able to get them returned and back to their families. We received a medal from the Air Force and one from the army. We met our LT. General Emerson back on Ft Bragg N.C. and received a handshake and a week off. Rode the Motorcycle as therapy. The US Army did its part. Training for what was to come. ADK
Thank you for your service.
@@humancattoy7767 Thank You most appreciated.
Thx Andrew
@@daleleibfried8648 Thank You for your thoughts.
thank you.
As a Tenerifian myself i remember this as a small kid,everyone talking about such terrible accident and the newspaper pages next day,even a four year old understood something really terrible had happened,still brings goosebumps watching it
I was four when John F Kennedy was assassinated. Same feeling. 'Something bad happened.' The sadness in the air is palpable, even to a four-year-old.
i used to walk the hills when i was younger me and my friend found a skull placed on a pile of rocks we were scared and ran it's making more sense now i haven't thought about it in year's
Is it true that the inhabitants of your island were isolated until the Spanish came in the 15th century ?
@@blossomjoseph5541 Having been there two years ago the vast majority of the people living on the island are Spanish. Don't know if there were any native tribes. There's a sizeable number of retirees from many countries living there (mostly English and German).
@@kathleenr4047 not comparable but thanks for inserting yourself lol
Terrorist 1: ''I called the Airport to let them know about the Bomb so that NOBODY will get hurt.''
-
Terrorist 2: ''Ermmm...Don't watch the news for a while.''
That terrorist group was actually made up of three people, backed of course by the USSR and Libya. That shows how many innocent people communism has killed around the world.
@@marneus lmao, communism is the go to word for the politically uneducated. 🤣
@@RSAgility Communism is the go to word for people who acknowledge the brutal murder of 100 million people at least. Killing fields, roads of bone and great leaps forward. If you see a hammer and sickle you should have the same reaction you would were it a swastika.
@@elias_xp95 True, about the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union is/was not the only version of communism. Certainly you do not blame Christianity for the many atrocities committed in its name?
@@stevengordon3271 I blame communism for the atrocities brought fourth by communism. I blame Christianity from the atrocities brought fourth by Christianity. I blame Nazism for the atrocities brought fourth by Nazism. Fascism fascism. etc.
The better question would be why would you not blame the ideology for the atrocities brought fourth by the ideology?
I did flight following in the arctic in the Canadian Military. Several times as technician standing in as a radio operator. I had situations where I heard mistakes made by flight crews in flight and was able to keycte mic and advise the issue and NEVER once go backlash. Several times pilots came into my radio room and thanked me for listening like i was suppose to and help keep them safe.
It's a culture that has gone from the "stone age" to "futuristic thinking" I less than a generation.
Thank you for your service.
@@stefanschleps8758 thank you for your support.
And it's a damn good thing for it too. I love that the culture in aviation has made that shift - it's one of the very few industries that has.
Thanks for your conscientious service. You saved lives and should be commended.
Now, not to nitpick, just trying to help. Maybe a read over and edit before hitting the publish button would a good idea. Makes reading much easier.
I had classmates vacationing in the Canary Islands, set to return at the time of this disaster. It's not like today where information comes quickly. It was at least 24 hours before we understood that it didn't involve them.
Like 9/11 and my ex-girlfriend who lived in New York. Or the attack on the airport in Vienna in 1985, when my mom was flying in. Now you find out in moments, back then the stress was terrible. Thanks for sharing.
@@stefanschleps8758 Pan Am 103 blown up over Lockerbie, the news was announced within minutes, and people in New York were advised to contact the airline desk immediately. The flight blew up about 19:00 - 14:00 in NY! By 19:30 the world knew!
The Tenerife disaster happened 9 months after beginning my aviation career. 45 years on & aviation is safer but still has work to do. The quest for profit will always be put before safety.
The quest for profit before safety is exactly why I'm terrified of flying
I think this is one area where AI can make a huuge difference, and relatively soon - especially in terms of what _appears_ to be the leading cause of these kinds of accidents; human error and miscommunication. Current stage of AI / neural networks, when appropriately trained, are extremely good at relatively(!) simple tasks, doing thousands or even millions of them every second, and doing a tonne of them in parallel. Now I'm not suggesting that the work of a pilot or traffic controller, is simple. But with good enough, rapid sensor input, almost all of it can be broken down into a million small maths calculations, equations, ifs and thens. Now a human couldn't do the job like that, nor should we try, but a computer / AI can. All those small pieces/decisions and increments, that's where it really shines.
My thoughts here goes a little bit like this example:
Traffic control, definitely run by AI. At minimum, it keeps super granular tabs on every detectable object in its airspace and on the ground. It provides guidance to the human traffic controller, and intervenes if something is overlooked / misinterpreted or dangerously delayed, and the human operator has not addressed the situation before the time to act is near running out. Further along, I'm thinking planes would fitted with similar AI, with the plane's autopilot being able to intervene, and if all else fail - the traffic control AI can "take control" of the plane, work in tandem with the onboard AI for sensor data, and bring it down safely, or do emergency manouvers to avoid a crash.
They reckon that by 2040 aviation accidents as a whole will be history
@@derrickallen2054 Except there is simply no safer way to travel. Billions of people fly each year (no pandemic) with no problem. It might be Ironic that flying is the safest form of travel humans have ever invented.
@@derrickallen2054 don't worry about it it's only a 35,000 foot fall! Lol
I wonder how that woman who decided to just not get back on the plane felt after she found out what happened, I mean she would have been dead for sure
I expect she was devastated, cuz her friends were on that flight.
There is a documentary about this disaster in which she talks about that. I think it's even here on youtube if you search for it
@@Reewen yes it is. Just search for tenerife Airport disaster.
Probably similar to the passengers on the Titanic that disembarked in Ireland before the ship put to sea for its first transatlantic voyage
Every large commercial plane wreck has some planned passengers who didn't board the plane on time. It's a common story. They had a problem that caused their delay. While they are cursing the fact that they missed the plane, they learn the plane went down.
I thought it was a well known event. I was a teenager at the time and as a fan of airplanes my whole life, I was properly horrified. There is also a really good episode of Mayday that tells the story through reenactment. It still shocks me to think about it.
that Mayday episode haunted me as a kid
I watched that too. I’ve watched Mayday and Air Crash Investigations a lot I think I’ve watched all of the videos on CZcams😂😂 tbh it helped me a lot when I flew for the first time since I was 5 I hate flying. It scares the hell out of me and I felt more comfortable knowing what I learned in those videos 😂😂always sit in the back
Yes, I also remember well this accident, I was a 9yrs old boy interested in aviation and I also was horrified by the accident.
I remember it happening vividly. I also remember the news reports showing photos of the passengers standing looking back at the burning mess. I remember a man with all the cloths on his back burnt off. Another shot of all the luggage.
There is a movie called Alive, about a plane crashing into the Andes mountains. A rugby team and other passengers have to start eating each other to survive. Based on a true story.
1:05 - Chapter 1 - The setup
3:20 - Chapter 2 - Disaster
6:15 - Chapter 3 - The investigation begins
8:20 - Mid roll ads
10:00 - Chapter 4 - A man in a hurry
11:55 - Chapter 5 - Deadly miscommunication
15:40 - Chapter 6 - Left seat autocracy
17:10 - Chapter 7 - Safety overhaul
18:50 - Chapter 8 - Legacy
thanks
Thank god I can skip to the mid roll thanks to you
Thank you
8:20 - Shave your balls
@@tomgimon5267 😂 🪒 your 🏀🏀
I’ve watched several documentaries on this disaster, but the others never mentioned Van Zanten’s time away from a real cockpit because he was training other pilots in a simulator.
Great job as usual!
I don't think that his absence from a cockpit had as much to do with the accident as his fatigue and the communication problems caused by the ATC with the thick accent using unfamiliar elements of speech. I'm sure that his professionalism accounted for every variable except for someone using the wrong word at the wrong time. And once he'd committed to his take-off roll, the accident was inevitable.
I hope that there's never a catastrophe like this, ever again; but I have more faith in mankind's tendency to allow "Business As Usual" to become "Oops!" Fortune passes everywhere.
@@DavidSmith-ss1cg Fatigue or impatience? Van Zanten had already attempted to spool up and takeoff without clearance and was stopped by the FO. A disturbing sequence in and of itself and a clear indication he was in a rush.
@@PabloGonzalez-hv3td - That is a version of events presented in the movie made about the disaster and backed up by one of the ai crash investigators, however it isn't supported by the the official investigation. When the FO pointed out they didn't have take off clearance, Van Zanten said 'I know, go ahead and ask for it'. The actor in the film is all embarrassed and closes the throttles - but we only have a typed transcript - we have no idea how he really said it and there is no record of the throttles being closed at this point. It is just one possible interpretation.
They had flight simulators in 1977?
@@neilkendall9857 they had RC planes and such back then as well....Of course they had flight simulators
Despite its best efforts, Manscaped could not prevent the Tenerife disaster.
You must be an OGBB Legend, allegedly.
But the whole 747 crew had smooth balls
@@Ryan-yj6nb clenched up against the body in the final seconds...
If only the pilots had shaved their balls! No one would have died!
Well, I just laughed, I guess my seat in hell has just been reserved
When a Quantas Airbus 380 suffered multiple failures, a flight engineer told the Captain he had the wrong stall speed and the captain listened to him. Times have changed.
The A380 doesn't have a flight engineer. If you're taking about Nancy Bird Walton's mishap there was a second officer in the cockpit for the long flight.
It wasn't multiple failures, just a single one that did a lot of damage, as uncontained engine failures are wont to do. And as the commenter above already mentioned, it was the second officer who made the suggestion to increase the landing speed to avoid a stall, not a flight engineer (as the A380 doesn't require one of those).
@@rjfaber1991 gotta admit that flight really flew through the eye of hell. Everything that could threaten the jet, did. It's a testament to just how good Qantas pilots are.
@@visionist7 It wasn't that much of a struggle to keep it in the air, but to land an A380 filled to the brim with fuel and unable to dump it, with only three engines and damaged hydraulics, that was an expert piece of piloting, even with the runway length available at Singapore Changi.
Stories like this are tragic reminders that quite often we don't anticipate all security and safety precautions until it's too late. May the 583 lost passengers rest in peace.
The leader of the guerrillas, Antonio Cubillo, eventually gave up the fight; the Spanish government to the surprise of many gave him and his followers a blanket pardon. He then requested permission to go to Spain and resume his medical studies and this to was granted.
Maybe he felt horrible that he was a link the the chain of events that caused this.
Perhaps going into the medical field was his way of atoning for what happened.
Healing instead of harming.
He technically was not at fault, but sometimes when you pull shit at an airport, you get people killed.
Plus he had to atone for those 8 injured in the bomb explosion.
Hi from Tenerife! The disaster has always been thought to us with the story that the job was commissioned to a man who died while still surveying the island for an airport. When the Government checked his maps, they found an X marked where Los Rodeos is right now, the only X on the maps, so they supposed it was the location to where they should build it. The X meant anywhere but here.
Wow that's pretty crazy!
I guess it's typical in smaller locales that there isn't a big involved survey including lots of different people, just a single person or a handful indicating what is needed.
Why shouldn’t they build there?
@@sittinonthegodamcornerdoindope exactly same reason why in 40s Nazis build the airport in my home town Rovaniemi where it is. Most foggy place in the city.
@@sittinonthegodamcornerdoindope it´s at a very high altitude, extremely windy at times and fog is way too common
This is one of the best reviews I have seen on this disaster. The Dutch pilot had a very bad case of simulator syndrome and it affected his judgement in everything. One of the reasons he had taken that flight was he had to have flown in a three month period or he himself would have had to Re-Qualify for flight status. Another thing that affected his judgement was KLM had used him as an advertisement and had called him Mister On Time. Been that far behind the schedule had started his stress level to escalate. When the PANAM pilots has asked him to pull out and let them by while the KLM ground crew was looking for the missing passengers Van Zanten basically told the PANAM pilots to buzz off he was in front. KLM airlines and the Dutch authorities went so far as to call the first crash investigation flawed and held their own where they tried to blame the PANAM plane for not turning off the runway when told. The cockpit recordings from both planes were released after that and the truth was out there as to who was at fault.
The lessons taken from this disaster are not exclusive to the airline industry. Every job sector can learn a thing or two from Tenerife; why employee cooperation is absolutely pertinent above all else. Unfortunately, many places seem to promote or idolize toxic work environments & it always ends the same way be it big or small. Everyone always waits until the last minute to finally speak up.
This episode really touched me in particular. As someone who works as a lead for a department in my workplace, while my job is nowhere near that of an airline captain, I still do the utmost of what I can to ensure that everyone in my department is at their best. I openly encourage people to speak out to me if they feel something is amiss & I regularly stress how important it is that we all work as a cohesive whole. No one is above anyone else & no one should feel as such.
100%, I've done a few management modules as part of my degree and one thing that's drilled into us is that in order for a workplace to thrive there needs to be an open environment where employees can share any grievances they may have and make suggestions, sadly far too often lower level employees are ignored by management
I watched this on Air Crash Investigation. This is one of perfect examples of what happens when you rush everything to meet a certain time. You get hundreds killed. But it’s crazy that if only a few things went differently this wouldn’t have happened.
Literally everything would have been avoided had one pilot not rushed. KLM worrying about footing the bill for hotels now has to payoff hundreds of families for many years after the disaster. Egotistical CEOs will never learn.
it's called "getthereitis"
Van zeten got impatient and started his takeoff roll without permission. If he hadn't been so worried about the time and such a diva, the accident would never have happened
@@dave1135 air France Concorde was delayed for approximately one hour and the passengers had a cruise booked after the flight. I believe Concorde took off with excessive fuel and baggage Wight plus a faulty undercarriage wheel. If you go to John Hutchins ex Concorde captain interview. He gives a very good talk about the Concorde crash.
@@brianfearn4246 Are you speaking of the Concord crash? That was caused because of a piece of metal left on the ground by another airplane being thrown up and puncturing the fuel tank of the Concord. I’m not sure why you think Weight was a concern. The plane did make it airborne.
I never met her but my father’s cousin was on the Pan am and didn’t make it. Glad to know so much good came out of the tragedy.
Yes but it's sad that it often takes a tragedy for some good to come out.
An excellent summary of the event. I was 14 when this accident occurred, and later became an air traffic controller, where part of our training focused on "breaking the chain" of factors that add up to catastrophe. The Tenerife Crash had so many links in its chain (only a few of which you mention here)--remove any one of them, break that link, and the accident does not happen. The radio communications are particularly haunting. Blocked transmissions were frequent when I was working (probably still are), and I got good at listening for the heterodyne that meant two people were talking at once. I can hear it in your playback of the controller's instructions at 13:30. If only the Spanish controller had picked up on it...
Other commenters have mentioned the "Mayday" episode, and I can second that one, for any who want to know more about what happened that day. A big smash of the "Like" button, gentlemen: Kudos to Simon and writer Ben for giving us such a good overview.
What a story--well and accurately told as usual, Simon. I have a tape of a gentleman who was on the Pan Am flight at Tenerife and survived. He was a staunch Christian and he recalls how his mother, a real "prayer-warrior", as he put it, sat him down before he left home and prayed with him for protection. He credits his mom's prayers for helping him keep his head when the KLM plane struck, to escape the burning wreckage and survive--both physically at the time and psychologically afterwards.
A much larger disaster than Tenerife was barely averted in San Francisco when that Air Canada pilot lined up to land on the taxiway beside the runway where several fully loaded and fueled airliners were waiting to take off. Had he not pulled up when he did it would have been catastrophic. As it was, he was only about 60 feet above the first aircraft as he pulled up.
That I definitely didn't know ... and would be a prime candidate for a ""Today I Found Out" video
@@russellfitzpatrick503 That was just a year or two ago, there are videos about it on CZcams.
On behalf of all Canadians, sorry.
Brilliant analysis, Crew Resource Management and Back Briefing, as well as overall better radio communication, were greatly improved in response to this disaster.
Let us not forget the lessons learned from this one.
RIP to all who died at Tenerife Airport that day.
Yeah, don't plant bombs.
New zealand had an airline disaster in antartica known as the mount erebus disaster might be worth doing a video on
The famous "An orchestrated litany of lies" as air NZ tried to blame the pilots
They tried flying over the ice wall huh?
I’m really surprised I’ve never heard of this. One of those things where everything went perfectly wrong. So very sad.
You must be young. It was 1977 and probably the worlds biggest aviation disaster ever.
As is the case with many aviation accidents, most are rarely caused by one thing, they are often the result of sequence of events.
In fact, this applies to many things, which, if at one point, had a decision or action taken would have been different, it would have changed the course or sequence of events and either avoided the catastrophic result, or, minimize its affects.
Heard of this a few years ago on a show about airplane disasters. Seems like every air disaster was the worst and then forgotten.
Never watched breaking bad?
@@RJinks87 Yep. I was 10 when this accident occurred and I never heard of it until BB
As a Dutch person who traveled to the Canary Islands before, I'm very surprised I've never heard of this accident until now. Can confirm, most of those airfields are very tiny and runways are very short.
Surprised at this as, along with the Malaysian airlines disaster in the Ukraine, it is one of the worst airline diasaters to include Dutch civilians
@@russellfitzpatrick503 Not to mention De Bijlmer Ramp.
The dutch government has refused to agree with the rest of the world on the primary cause. They seemed to take it as a black eye to the Nation rather than one individual. The reality is given the same circumstances the captain of any airline from any country would likely have done the same thing. The culture was the captain is God and that is final.
Can't fault national pride, even when unnecessary and misplaced. I'm American, I'm used to my government claiming superiority when all available data proves otherwise.
Look up Air Crash Investigation on this incident they go over everything that happened they have simulations of how it occurred and gives you background on the black box’s of the planes and you get to know what the air traffic controller was doing. Actually the biggest reason for this crash was that the pan am and air traffic controller talked at the same time which caused static in the headsets of the KLM pilots so they thought runway was clear so they took off which was wrong.
@@goochfitness26 lol so you're Dutch I take it?
I remember this accident. I was in College in Texas when the accident happened and knew a girl whose parents died on the Pan Am 747 on Tenerife.
Simon needs to start a disaster channel with longer format videos akin to his podcast Casual Criminalist.
I mean, Geographics has pretty much turned into that lol. Except the videos could be a bit longer. But I wouldn't say he needs a separate channel just for disaster themes, that'd get fairly dried up eventually, I think blending it into this channel is better.
I'm sure Simon, Daven & Co are already planning on it
Is he not doing enough already
This dude has like four channels already
@@martinvannostrand8488 It's ten active ones right now, actually :P TopTenz, Today I Found Out, xplrd, Highlight History, Megaprojects, Sideprojects, Biographics, Geographics, Business Blaze, and Casual Criminalist.
No, I really don't know why I memorized that lol I just learned them all a few weeks ago for fun
Watching Air Crash Investigation episodes, nearly all the crashes boil down to "Company would have had to spend money, so they did the bad thing."
Folks Bucky Up!
Just over $6,000 per body per incident I think it is;
I have shacked with Global Corporate Office whom wonders how it is 2 planes get within a 1 Kilometer separation: She was calculating costs known as ROI in MBA speak
In the war of Profits vs Consumers, all too often Profits wins out.
@@ikr9358
Researchers Say what you tell them to-if you pay them
Having watched countless episodes, that isn't remotely true. Not to deny corporations value profit over all else, but the vast majority of crashes are caused by human error or mechanical failure. Lack of adequate training and unclear cockpit communication standards are the most common factors attributable to corporate cheapness, but even those aren't the sole reason for "nearly all the crashes".
@@dk50b Although that begs the question: Is there a way to reduce the effect of 'human error'? Say all flights are fully automated, that won't change the crashes that are due to mechanical failure. And a decent amount of crashes are due to conflicting information from the instruments; there's nothing to say that an automated system would make the correct decision.
About the 'Left Seat Autocracy'. On the CVR it could be heard that the first officer did doubt (and asked) if the Pan Am had left the runway, the captain responded "jawel" ("yes") and started take off right after.
Actually, it was the flight engineer (technically the lowest ranking of the three crew members) who had the doubt and said something. The captain responded "jawel", and the first officer did not question that certainty...
@@fyrequeene thanks for correcting me, I thought it was the first officer. Still, damn shame tho
The first officer did challenge the pilot once also.
@@neilkurzman4907 Twice in fact. The first time he challenged Van Zanten about his decision to completely fill the plane with fuel, stating that the plane had plenty to get to Gran Canaria. Van Zanten basically said, "My plane, my rules, bitch" in response. The second time was when he informed Van Zanten that they needed atc clearance after Van Zanten started taking off without any clearances. Van Zanten's response was "I know that, go ahead and ask". I guess that the first officer felt too intimidated to query the captain after that.
@@laceneil4570
Some of the captains decisions were based on rigid rules from the airline and his counties version of the FAA.
If he flew more than that allowable number of hours he could’ve lost his pilots license. So trying to save a few minutes here and there mattered to him more than it should have.
"after both engines stopped working"
Ah so that's what you call it when both engines ingest a whole ass goose
I studied this crash as part of aviation studies and to this day this crash still plays in the back of my mind, if only one of the list of things that happened that day changed then the crash might not have happened. The crash reminds me to never slack on my duties and to always try to do our jobs as safely as we can
That's often the case for big disasters: multiple things have to go wrong at the same time. Flixborough, Piper Alpha, Bhopal, Chernobyl, ... Which is why you shouldn't ignore "near misses". They're the times when "almost" everything went wrong, often in ways you never thought they could. Hopefully it gives you a chance to remove the cause of the error before it happens again.
@@batguano6 It's the case in every disaster. If that car hadn't been there...the plane...the reactor...etc.
I hate conjecture
I was in high school when this happened and remember it well. :-(
When I learned to fly some years later I was taught the lessons learned from my very first flight. In ground school I also studied Eastern 401 and PSA 182. In the air I applied the lessons learned.
My great aunt was killed in this accident. I want to thank you for providing such a thorough and clear presentation of all the factors involved. This is, by far, the best video I've watched on this subject. Well done!
I grew up in Gran Canaria, the island where they were heading. I remember this because of two things. I used to have a babysitter who later moved on to become a flight attendant. She was on the KLM plane and died.
The other, unrelated, but my neighbor crashed his small plane and died at this airport.
It is unfortunately at a height and wedged between two mountains and clouds tend to flow through this gap in the mountains and is probably the only airport that I have little butterflies in my stomach for. Also for something TOTALLY unrelated, when I get a new flight sim, I always do Gando-Los Rodeos as my first flight.
"But first a quick word from today's sponsor" *Clicks right arrow key 15 times as quick as I can*
I’ve seen so many disaster videos that I can’t believe this is the first time I’m hearing about this incident.
Same here! An incredibly sad story
Surprising, this is a big one in history.
Hopefully nothing ever surpasses it.
This also started the ground radar system for airports that allowed ATC for the airport to track aircraft on ground due to fog or other weather events.
As I recall ground radar was already operational at some airports, but Los Rodeos forced an increase in its deployment.
Los Rodeos also instigated many changes in procedures. Hopefully such a tragedy can never occur again.
In US navy Air Traffic Control school, you learn about this literally the 2nd hour of day 1.
Another suggestion, Japan Airlines Flight 123, the Deadliest single airplane disaster
Lol I’ve been asking other CZcamsrs to talk about it as well! Amazing flying on behalf of the pilots for sure but sadly was futile.
Wasn't that the one from Tokyo to Osaka with 5 survivors
@@mnatu21 sadly yes
@@mnatu21 yes
@KombatBard i couldn't remember the exact details but read bout that on wikipedia a few yrs ago
I love how British people say “behemoth”
I can’t stand them trying to say “aluminum “ they add an I at the end when they say it lol
@@MattttG3 I cant stand americans trying to speak english by saying "aluminium". They stick a huge U in it. Aloooominum.
@@michaelcliffe562 lol you guys says “al-u-min-E-mum “
You mean bear-moth?
@@MattttG3 well they actually spell it "aluminium". So they're pronouncing how it's officially spelled there. British English and American English have some differences like that. Centre, theatre, etc.
I used to have a friend who, for all his faults and big ego, told me flat out to always feel like I can say something when in the car with him bc he knew that two pairs of eyes are better than one and sometimes, bc the passenger has a different perspective, they can see something the driver can't. I always told my passengers the same. I'll NEVER get mad for someone speaking up in the car (not "backseat driving" that's something different).
And that pilot is my grandfathers cousin...he is kinda the dark mark of the family.
That's kind of sad. I put more blame on KLM than on him, honestly. If they hadn't enacted such ultimately counter productive policies concerning their pilots, I believe he wouldn't have rushed anything.
He was not a bad person just made a mistake that should not have had that kind of outcome , other things were in play
KLM put him on a flight without practical experience, only theoretical, I would not blame him.
Thank you for commenting. Being of the family of the capt. who is generally thought of as the one who caused this terrible accident is interesting to hear from. Even with that, it was still a terrible lose to your family. Saying that he did not want this outcome is an understatement. He didn't have the intention of blowing up two 747's. From the marks left on the runway he tried to avoid what he couldn't. I think it was at that moment he realized his mistake.
I know he wasn't a bad guy but my family is very judgemental and back in the Neatherlands are sort of blue blood. (I was born in Canada so I'm kinda separated from them.) So they don't never have much patience for mistakes.
I remember seeing this on Air Crash Investigation on Discovery years ago, such a tremendous domino effect crating a nightmare
Most air accidents are a chain of events, not a single thing.
Just wanted to say good luck, we're all counting on you.
A hospital? What is it?
Well first the earth cooled, then the dinosaurs came, but they died because they grew too big and fat...
@@thomassmart4088 It's a building with patients in it, but that doesn't matter right now.
Lol. Too soon?
@@thomassmart4088 I love you
5:12 that image is from the crash at Nairobi by *Lufthansa Flight 540* . Its surprising to see that it is still being mistaken as an image of the Tenerife disaster.
The worst accident in aviation history is also the most avoidable and the most attributable to pilot negligence (it goes way beyond pilot error)
More then just pilot negligence so many things on play here can’t just put everything on the pilot
@@lonemaus562 but mainly negligence. Sure he was under pressure he shouldn’t have been. Sure there were unfortunate circumstance that there shouldn’t have been but who rolls blind down a runway they just taxied up knowing it’s the only way to takeoff point as well as without having gotten clearance, if you
Listen to cVR it’s clear he was being negligent. If he would have attempted clear instruction from the tower he would have been fine. The other guys even ask, is that Panam on the runway? Furthermore it was his decision to waste time refueling there instead of the destination airport that jammed up the line. He made everyone wait for him because he was “the man” and there is no way around it, the incident was his fault and his alone. If you demand confirmation aside from what’s in this video I would recommend several excellent in depth analysis of the event, like on The Flight Channel
That was not the only accident and history caused by the type of interaction with a senior pilot. In fact Korean Airlines had the same issue coming into the century. Captains from a military culture not listening to their juniors, compounded by a culture of respect your seniors.
It’s why a lot of time and effort was spent training that out of the air line culture
@@joshuapatrick682 - You've clearly been watching one of the documentaries on this. Some of them are not as accurate or balance as they might be. For example, you absolutely cannot listen to the cVR - it has never been released. All we have available is a very short section of transcript of the final moments. What you have heard are actors reading a script padded out by the documentary maker. You are commenting on someone else's interpretation of what might have happened.
Excellent documentary and very well delivered ,as usual. This is a perfect avenue into a myriad of events in so many areas that would make for excellent documentaries.
Last year, I had to go through 4 weeks of training to work at Melbourne Airport as a Work Safety Officer, this aviation disaster was part of our training video we watched, and I first learned of it.
I was a 17-year-old plainspotter and 747 enthusiast when this happened. I was extremely shocked when seeing the pictures in the press!
If you’re interested in another aviation disaster I recommend the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision and the murder of the air traffic controller that followed the disaster.
I don't know why but this almost made me cry, usually these videos don't have this type of effect on me
Having worked in industrial safety & quality for years ... sum1 brings up tenefrie as an example, etc. every few yrs. the story actually makes me feel worse each time i hear it. such horrible, PREVENTABLE loss. yea, i choke up alot. :-(
What happened to some of the passengers on the Pan Am flight is not pleasant - one of the KLM engines (fully spooled up mid takeoff roll) went straight through the First Class section. Mulched
Thanks for the video Simon. Very calming and informative despite the bloody history of that incident. Good use of music.
As always Simon and the team , you delivered a great video, obviously well researched. Thank you
I remember this playing out in the American news. People were rightly horrified. It was the big story for a long time. Our local newspaper in the days to come printed the names of all the victims using a black border around the page. It was reported that the impact was so hot that the runway immediately melted. I was 10, and enjoyed flying up to that point. With that and the various skyjackings taking place in those years, I became a nervous flyer for years after.
Remember too that the 747 was still relatively new at the time, and there had been doom-sayers when the planes were introduced worrying about such large aircraft moving around in confined airports. Tenerife made a lot of people sit up and reconsider procedures world-wide, chages that have helped save thousands of lives.
Unfortunate how disasters seem to be the only way to fix things that should have been known of already.
I could listen to your deep explanation all day. So much to learn.
Unfortunately Tenerife is actually the second deadliest air disaster in aviation history. The deadliest crash happened when a Japanese jumbo jet carrying over 600 people crashed after the plane's tail came off mid flight. This destroyed the hydraulics system and rendered the plane nearly uncontrollable. Remarkably, 4 passengers managed to survive.
No the KLM/Pan Am disaster is the deadliest with 583 deaths, the Japanese flight was 520 deaths with 4 survivors so it is the second deadliest air disaster
You are referring to Japan Airlines flight 123. That was the worst single-aircraft accident in history, and the death toll was 520 out of 524. There were more survivors, but the rescue effort was greatly delayed by the remote terrain and Japan’s refusal of assistance from the American military. Consequently, many died before rescue finally arrived.
@KombatBard Haha no biggies XD
This is still unbelievable 😭💔.
Excellent vid! Articulate, well written, superb delivery, and fine diction! I have been able to follow your fast-speak and enjoy you unique style!🦌💌❤️🙏📚🇨🇦
I'm old enough to remember this. In a documentary I saw, they said the flight engineer of the KLM asked the pilot if the Pan Am was clear and the pilot said yes.
This disaster also caused airports to start installing surface movement radar (SMR), which can track the location of airplanes and ground support vehicles on runways, taxiways and so on.
Ahhh nothing better then pay YT Premium to watch great video which is disrupted with ad of balls shaver...
You would think they would add faster forward system so you could just skip pass the part you don't want to see. Ooh wait they have one, USE IT
@@mylesbellott5676 I pay YT Premium to watch video uninterrupted so no skip, no fast forward, no action from me when I am watching, no bullsh#.
@@szymonmosiolek I'm sorry this has been a utter disaster in your life, I hope you can recover from such a traumatic event of touching your screen once or twice. 😭😭 we will pray for your recovery
@@szymonmosiolek Then you're a total sucker. Im sure you already know that adblockers exist, so just use it.
@@blackwatchpilot5329 I feel like one. YT Premium has few other nice features, especially mobile app which are worth to pay. I watch lots of YT on TV and there is no option for ad blocker.
Thanks for making sure to emphasise how the airline industry's reaction to this disaster (as with any incident) has been to improve machinery, infrastructure, training and procedures in order to stop anything like it from happening again. It's so easy to take an event like this and just mine it for its horror value (add the fact that so many people are scared of flying and you've got immediate clickbait gold); you did the responsible thing by explaining all the individual things that had to go wrong for something this catastrophic to be possible and how many of those things are, nowadays, increasingly unlikely as the industry has used this lesson to improve safety on all levels. I've never been properly scared of flying, but it's treatments like this that make me feel thoroughly safe when I get on a plane.
Given accidents like USAir at LAX, Singapore Taipei ans SAS at Linate, I wonder how much we really did to reduce these kind of events. I'm under the impression that ground collisions may still be the most vulnerable area of risk today. Is enough being done?
Hey Ive seen many of your videos and you did an exceptional job on this one
I remember seeing the episode about this crash on aircrash investigations. It was a crazy accident due to circumstances. Really sad.
I remember that from years ago
Could you do a video on The Highway of Tears. In British Columbia?
Thank you for a really good explanation of the Teneriffe disaster Simon.
Remember this crash from childhood. Thanks for the full story
Not So Fun Fact: First Responders, to get close to the wreckage, had to drive over body parts, avoiding as much as able driving in between metal chunks. A most unpleasant part of their experience.
The Everett Boeing plant is HUGE. I get vertigo and started feeling it there 😳
Are people allowed to visit it??
@@mikehouqe8634 absolutely! They give tours
@@moonypie5579 nice! I'm from Manchester England I would love to go there sometime
@@mikehouqe8634 if you’re there, the Chihuly glass museum and museum of pop culture are awesome
@@mikehouqe8634 meaning in NW washington
A sympathetic and sombre examination, well written and presented.
Great breakdown explanation of the incident.
18:49 preparation for youtube algorithm. 50th anniversary is in six years from now.
Wait.. what? 1977 was OVER 40 YEARS AGO?
... the 70s were 20 years ago. Good lord I'm getting old :(
lol, I was jus treminded last week was the 40th anniversary of my enlistment in 1981. Surely it hasn't been THAT long....? There's no way I can be almost....
Sixty....?
The application XAENON.EXE has stopped responding.
I remember reading about this in the newspaper back in the day. Great covering.
I appreciate this video: it's added another layer to the discussion of this tragedy.
8:54 "More specifically, it's an anti-chafing ball deodorant..."
FFS, this made me laugh my ass off. My balls smell amazing but I need this stuff anyway!
JAPAN 123 is the worst single airplane disaster. That's also a very interesting and sad plane crash.
If you've watched air crash investigation then almost every episode it gets called worst airplane disaster in history, (in country X or the world at that time, ect...)
Thank you for a very informative narrative about the worst disaster in the history of aviation.
You make my days better watching your videos🙏🏼
Can you do 1 on the Maze Prison AKA Long Kesh in Northern Ireland?
Check out the book "Say Nothing" by Patrick Radden Keefe! All about NI and a bunch of stories about Long Kesh
Great idea
It's sad that the Hawaii of Spain was home to one of the worst aviation disasters ever and that was before 9/11. I'm glad that air travel is way safer than before but even then, there is always some feelings of uncertainty that we feel among us. Other than that, RIP to the victims
I remember that accident, but I never learned the details, until now. Thanks!
I was waiting for this video for ages I used this accident as a basis for a project in school and it fascinates me. Thank you Simon for doing this topic cheers CTM
I thought either the co-pilot or engineer actually queried the captain saying 'are they not clear yet?' He did speak up as the captain advanced the throttles. The Dutch still don't accept responsibility.
you're right. they did, but the captain failed to recognize that... :(
It was the flight engineer, he did speak up. There is a discrepancy in the official reports. One reports says the Captain said 'Yes they are', the other report says both the Captain AND the FO said they were - so it is possible they both thought the Pan Am was clear - either way, you are right, the FE did speak up. It was actually as they were accelerating down the runway when he heard a message from PanAm. Might have been too late by then, anyway.
😂😂weedwhacker, I once had a co-worker referred to by that handle, though for totally different reasons 😂
Well done on the video. I thought this was a nuanced and balanced view of the disaster which avoided the trap that many documentaries make of just blaming everything on van Zanten and pretty much leaving it at that.
Well done and informative 👏
I like that all his channels are posted at 11am .. time for lunch break lol
Nice
Its like 8:30 here when they release so its my coffee time
Whel for me its when i am making dinner
"...just PLANE bad luck..." Oof
Nicely done. Thanks
Simon, there's also the story of a mid-air crash over New York in 1960 United and TWA), and another over the Grand Canyon in 1956 (also United and TWA). Not to mention the catastropjic crash of a PSA and light airplane over a San Diego neighborhood back in 1978. This carnage in Tenerife just happened to occur on the ground. Still the worst lost of life in a passenger airplane crash. May they rest in peace. May the survivors have found a way to cope with this incredible trauma. Watching safely from the American Midwest as a child, I will never forget this one...