The Tenerife airport disaster killed 583 people
On this day · 27 March 1977
On a fog-bound runway in the Canary Islands, two jumbo jets met head-on in the deadliest accident aviation has ever recorded.
On 27 March 1977, two Boeing 747s collided on a single runway at Los Rodeos airport on Tenerife, killing 583 people. It remains the deadliest accident in aviation history.
Neither plane was meant to be there. A bomb at nearby Gran Canaria had diverted both KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, jamming the small airport so full that departing jets had to taxi down the active runway. Then dense fog rolled in, and the control tower and crews lost sight of one another.
The KLM captain began his takeoff roll without clearance, slamming into the Pan Am jet still taxiing ahead.
Ambiguous radio phrasing sealed it: a clipped “OK” from the tower and a non-standard “we are at takeoff” left each party hearing what it expected. All 248 aboard the KLM jet died, along with 335 of 396 on the Pan Am. The catastrophe rewrote cockpit culture, giving rise to crew resource management and stricter, standardized phraseology now used worldwide.
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