What REALLY Caused the Worst Airport Disaster In History?! | Tenerife Airport Disaster

Comments · 12K

• ME

  @MentourPilot · 1 year ago · pinned

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• ZI

  @ZiggyDoom · 3 years ago

  Ironic how the worst Aviation disaster in history didnt even happen in the air.

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• DA

  @davidalexander7742 · 4 years ago

  You have made an excellent documentary about the accident on Tenerife. &nbsp;Thank you for &nbsp;your expertise. &nbsp;I am a survivor of this accident. &nbsp;I am 1 of 75 initial survivors and was 1 of 14 walking survivors who were treated at Candelario Hospital and released. &nbsp;In addition, I am 1 of 2 photographers that Sunnday afternoon. &nbsp;The post impact photo that is in this video is one of mine. &nbsp;I give you my permission to use it. &nbsp;(My film was stolen by a Dutch fellow named Hans Hofman who sold copies in western Europe.) &nbsp;I was sitting in 30C, the row in front of the exit door over the wing. &nbsp;Upon impact, part of the ceiling disappeared and I climbed out of the hole above my seat onto the left wing. &nbsp;I found a woman on the wing sliding towards the inboard engine which was on fire. &nbsp;I pulled her further out on the wing, tossed her off the leading edge, &nbsp;jumped off and ran. &nbsp;Once I got away I stopped and looked back. &nbsp;Then I saw KLM and realized they had run ito us. &nbsp;Just then a fireball exploded on the wingtip of Pan Am and the &nbsp;whole plane caught on fire. &nbsp;I ran further away then stopped and took 5 photos of the plane to document what I was seeing. &nbsp;In 2015 I released a book about my experience and more titled &quot;Never Wait for the Fire Truck&quot; by David Yeager Alexander which is available on Amazon. &nbsp;I also wrote about aircraft interior safety and runway safety. Also, I was interviewed by Jon Ziomek for his &nbsp;book, shown in your video, titled &quot;Collision On Tenerife&quot;. &nbsp;Thanks again for your good work.

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• DA

  @dannystrachan475 · 3 years ago

  Captain Van Zanten&apos;s picture was used in KLM&apos;s ads and he was so highly regarded that the Dutch investigators tried to contact him to assist in their investigation, not knowing that he was in command of that fateful 747.

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• BL

  @BlackBoxVaultHQ · 5 months ago

  The detail that always gets me is the simultaneous transmission. Pan Am was literally saying &quot;we&apos;re still on the runway&quot; at the exact moment the tower was saying &quot;stand by for takeoff,&quot; &nbsp;and neither message got through to KLM. One second of timing difference and 583 people survive. The chain of coincidences required for this disaster to happen is almost incomprehensible.

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• OR

  @orlandoberdec2370 · 4 years ago

  I was a flight attendant for Pan AM at that time . That night I flew to Brazil( Rio de Janeiro) two of my friends were working that flight and both of them didn&apos;t survive. I learned of the tragedy late in the afternoon while I checked with the hotel lobby of any changes to my schedule. The clerk informed me of the tragedy. &nbsp;It was a sad time for all of us at Pan AM. I still think about my friends. Rip Carol Thomas and Miguel Torrech my dear friends. I can&apos;t believe that I am still around after all these years. I quit Pan am &nbsp;in 1982 and went back to the university for a master degree and became and educator. &nbsp;It was a wonderful time my ten years with Pan AM,. I saw the world and became a better person . Thanks to all those who made it possible for me to have had such a wonderful experience. Soon I will see my friends, again. May God bless them all.

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• DA

  @darrylpioch2055 · 4 years ago

  Many years ago when I was a kid… I believe it was a 737 we were in.. we were about to land in Switzerland and just before the landing gear touched the runway the pilot violently pulled up. So hard it physically hurt and harder than you’d ever guess a commercial jet could maneuver. A bunch of people screamed.<br><br>It was because someone made a mistake and another plane started crossing the runway in front of us. Shout out to that pilot 🤞

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• NA

  @nataliemamo8709 · 2 years ago

  The surviving flight attendants on the pan am were heroes. &nbsp;One of them was literally throwing people off the wing because they were hesitating and she knew they would die if they didnt jump. &nbsp;If the pan am crew didnt turn when they would have lost everyone

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• LU

  @LusiaEyre · 1 year ago (edited)

  In Polish, we have this saying, &quot;gdy sie czlowiek spieszy, to sie diabel cieszy,&quot; which translates to &quot;when a person is the the rush, the devil rejoices&quot;. Instead of making peace with the possibility of spending the night away from home, he doomed himself and many others to never return. But the whole thing was a general mess of miscommunication, impatience, and wanting to just get over this unplanned detour.

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• CY

  @cynthiajohnson9412 · 4 years ago (edited)

  These stories haunt me in a bad way for a while until they haunt me in a good way. The irony that the Dutch pilot was hurrying to get home to his wife is one of those lessons I&apos;ll take to heart the next time I&apos;m behind the wheel of a car rushing to get somewhere. We know we all do it. &nbsp;Better late than never.

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• GR

  @gregoryschmidt1233 · 3 years ago

  To think that it could have been avoided by the KLM captain simply asking on the frequency, &quot;PanAm, are you clear of the runway?&quot; I know it&apos;s not SOP for aircraft to talk directly to each other, but under these conditions, given the poor visibility, the confusion, and the language problems with the controller, it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

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• DA

  @dackelprincess1 · 3 years ago

  I knew the Pan Am Co-Pilot Bob Bragg quite well. He was injured but eventually went back to work. The Captain of the Pan Am flight, Victor Grubbs, did fly again, but the weight he carried at the loss of his passengers weighed heavily on him until he died.

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