The Tenerife airport disaster occurred on 27 March 1977, when two Boeing 747 passenger jets collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the Spanish island of Tenerife. The accident occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run in dense fog, colliding with the right side of Pan Am Flight 1736 still on the runway. The impact and the resulting fire killed all 248 people on board the KLM plane and 335 of the 396 people on board the Pan Am plane, with only 61 survivors in the front section of the latter aircraft. With a total of 583 fatalities, the disaster is the deadliest accident in aviation history.
An aviation accident is an event during aircraft operation that causes serious injury, death, or destruction. An aviation incident is any operating event that compromises safety but does not progress to an aviation accident. Preventing accidents and incidents is the main goal of aviation safety.
The Convair 880 is a retired American narrow-body jet airliner produced by the Convair division of General Dynamics. It was designed to compete with the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 by being smaller but faster, a niche that failed to create demand. When it was first introduced, some in aviation circles claimed that at 615 mph (990 km/h), it was the fastest jet transport in the world. Only 65 Convair 880s were produced over the lifetime of the production run from 1959 to 1962, and General Dynamics eventually withdrew from the airliner market after considering the 880 project a failure. The Convair 990 Coronado was a stretched and faster variant of the 880.
The Convair 990 Coronado is a retired American narrow-body four-engined jet airliner produced between 1961 and 1963 by the Convair division of American company General Dynamics. It was a stretched version of its earlier Convair 880 produced in response to a request from American Airlines: the 990 was lengthened by 10 ft (3.0 m), which increased the number of passengers from between 88 and 110 in the 880 to between 96 and 121. This was still fewer passengers than the contemporary Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8, although the 990 was 25–35 mph (40–56 km/h) faster than either in cruise.
Avianca Flight 011 was a Boeing 747-200BM Combi on an international scheduled passenger flight from Frankfurt to Bogotá via Paris, Madrid, and Caracas that crashed near Madrid on 27 November 1983. It took off from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris at 22:25 on 26 November 1983 for Madrid Barajas Airport; take-off was delayed waiting for additional passengers from a Lufthansa flight due to a cancellation of the Paris-Frankfurt-Paris segment by Avianca for operational reasons.
Swissair Flight 330 (SR330/SWR330) was a regularly scheduled flight from Zurich Airport in Kloten, Switzerland, to Hong Kong with a planned stopover in Tel Aviv, Israel. A bomb planted by two members of the PLO exploded soon after takeoff, causing the plane to crash, killing all 47 passengers and crew.
Spantax S.A. was a former Spanish leisure airline headquartered in Madrid that operated from 6 October 1959 to 29 March 1988. Spantax was one of the first Spanish airlines to operate tourist charter flights between European and North American cities and popular Spanish holiday destinations and was considered a major force in developing 20th-century mass tourism in Spain. Its popularity and image faded from the 1970s onward when a series of crashes and incidents revealed safety deficits, which, combined with rising fuel costs and increasing competition, resulted in the company facing severe financial difficulties that led to its demise in 1988.
Tenerife North–Ciudad de La Laguna Airport, formerly Los Rodeos Airport, is the smaller of the two international airports on the island of Tenerife, Spain. It is located in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, 11 km (7 mi) by road from Santa Cruz and at an elevation of 633 metres (2,077 ft). It handled 6,120,550 passengers in 2023. Combined with Tenerife South Airport, the island gathers the highest passenger movement of all the Canary Islands, with 18,457,794 passengers, surpassing Gran Canaria Airport. Today TFN is an inter-island hub connecting all seven of the main Canary Islands with connections to the Iberian Peninsula and Europe.
American Airlines Flight 383 was a nonstop flight from New York City to Cincinnati on November 8, 1965. The aircraft was a Boeing 727, with 57 passengers, and 5 crew on board. The aircraft crashed on final approach to the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport located in Hebron, Kentucky, United States. Only three passengers and one flight attendant survived the accident.
Iberia Líneas Aéreas de España, S.A., usually shortened to Iberia, is the largest airline of Spain, based in Madrid.
Linjeflyg Flight 267V was a controlled flight into terrain by a Convair 440-75 Metropolitan on 20 November 1964 at 21:14 in Ängelholm, Skåne, Sweden. The Linjeflyg pilots, misled by a non-conventional military runway light configuration, descended too early and on a faulty course during approach to Ängelholm–Helsingborg Airport. The crash killed 31 of 43 people on board, making it the deadliest aviation accident in Sweden.
Jacob Louis Veldhuyzen van Zanten was a Dutch aircraft captain and flight instructor. He was the captain of KLM Flight 4805, and died in the Tenerife airport disaster, the deadliest accident in aviation history. He was KLM's chief instructor and commonly appeared on advertising.
On March 4, 1966, Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 402 (CP402) struck the approach lights and a seawall during a night landing attempt in poor visibility at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. Of the 62 passengers and 10 crew, only 8 passengers survived.
Allegheny Airlines Flight 485 was a regularly scheduled domestic passenger flight between Washington, D.C. and Newport News, Virginia, United States, with three stop-overs, two in Connecticut and a third in Pennsylvania. On June 7, 1971, the Allegheny Airlines Convair CV-580 operating the flight crashed on approach to Tweed New Haven Regional Airport, New Haven County, Connecticut.
On December 20, 1972, North Central Airlines Flight 575 and Delta Air Lines Flight 954 collided on a runway at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Ten people died – all on the North Central aircraft – and 17 were injured in the accident. This was the second major airliner accident to happen in Chicago in December 1972; the other was United Air Lines Flight 553, which crashed 12 days earlier on approach to Midway Airport.
Dan-Air Flight 1903 was an unscheduled international passenger service from Manchester to Barcelona, operated by Dan Air Services Limited under contract with British tour operator Clarksons Holidays, which arranged for the flight to carry a group of holidaymakers who had booked an all-inclusive package holiday with the operator.
The 1973 Nantes mid-air collision occurred when two Spanish airliners travelling to London hit each other over Nantes, France, on 5 March 1973. They were an Iberia McDonnell Douglas DC-9 flying from Palma de Mallorca and a Spantax Convair 990 from Madrid. All 68 people on board the DC-9 were killed. The CV-990 was able to make a successful emergency landing at Cognac – Châteaubernard Air Base.
On 5 January 1970, a Convair 990 Coronado operated by the Spanish airline Spantax crashed shortly after take-off from Stockholm Arlanda Airport, killing five of the ten people on board.
