Tenerife Airport Disaster

Ishaan Writes
2 min readDec 21, 2023

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WARNING: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE. VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED

On the evening of Sunday 27th March of 1977, at 5 pm, two Boeing 747s, one from Pan American Airlines and another from KLM (Royal Aviation Company) *translation in Danish* collided on the island of Tenerife, a part of Spain. this disaster resulted in 583 fatalities and only 61 survivors.

What happened on the day —

on Sunday the 27th of 1977, it was a normal day for people at the Los Rodeos airport in Tenerife, Spain. people were walking and going about and catching their flights when news came that a bomb had exploded at the Grand Canaria airport. The Canary Islands' independence movement caused this bomb blast. this caused many of Gran Canaria's flights to be shifted to the Los Rodeos airport. the planes involved in this disaster were supposed to take off at the Gran Canaria airport. so these flights had no option but to take off at the Los Rodeos airport.

disaster unfolding —

The thing was, with the condition of bad weather and unclear communication with Pan American and KLM, a disaster was inevitable. but still, they decided to take the flight because the weather conditions were pretty decent. so what happened was when they were on the runway, the two 747s were ready to take off and after they took off, the two airplanes met themselves face to face with a life-threatening crash before their eyes. according to the CVR(cockpit voice recorder), the PAN AM captain said “There he is!” when he spotted the KLM's landing lights through the fog. then it became clear that the KLM was approaching the c4 exit at full speed. When it soon became clear that the aircraft was approaching at full speed, Captain Grubbs exclaimed “That godd**m son of a b**** is coming at us!” then the inevitable happened. The plane approached and made a middle collision. what people saw at the airport was the apocalypse happening. KLM glided over Pan American. the roof of Pan Americans blew in. Many people in PanAmerican found themselves with fire and stinging pieces of hot metal flying around the place like bullets. after gliding on Pan American, KLM was gliding on the runway dangerously until the pilot hit the brakes.

losses on the disaster —

Almost everyone on Pan American got killed on the day. most people survived on KLM. there was a total of 583 deaths and 60 injuries, although this was the biggest airplane accident, it is important to say that nobody made such a big accident happen. we can learn from this lesson and hope that nothing bad happens to any airports or people.

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Ishaan Writes

Hello everyone. I am a 12 yr old hobby writer. I will like to say that you can support me by reading my articles. thank you all people who are reading right now