Word: klm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...inferno had occurred on Los Rodeos' single, fog-shrouded airstrip. Two 231-ft.-long Boeing 747 jumbo jets, each weighing some 700,000 Ibs., had collided?incredibly?on the ground. Taking off down a runway visible for less than a sixth of its length, KLM 4805 (the Rhine River) smashed into Pan American 1736 (the Clipper Victor), taxiing toward the same takeoff point. Roaring at full power, the KLM's hot engines (2000° F.) and massive landing gear crunched through the Pan Am's fuselage with such impact and explosive fire that aluminum and steel parts of both planes were...
...passengers and the 14 crew members of the KLM plane perished. There were 67 survivors from the Pan Am plane?most of them from California, where the flight had originated. One woman died aboard the military aircraft sent to fly the injured back to the U.S. At week's end nine remained in critical condition, suffering severe burns. The accident almost certainly will involve the highest insurance claims for any non-natural disaster. Estimates from London insurers placed the potential payout at $240 million. Survivors in California already have filed a class action suit against KLM, Pan Am and Boeing...
...Netherlands, Pan Am and KLM?probed the disaster. Human error seemed the most probable cause. As U.S. Federal Aviation Administrator John McLucas put it: "Apparently not everybody had his head up." The only other possibility was an unlikely malfunction in radio equipment that could have prevented the KLM pilot from hearing the last vital communications from the airport tower or from the Pan Am cockpit. If both pilots and the tower controllers had fully heard ?and understood?one another, the KLM pilot would never have sent his craft hurtling toward takeoff before the Pan Am plane...
...KLM Pilot Jacob Veldhuizen Van Zanten, 51, a 25-year career flyer so experienced that he spent half his time training other KLM pilots (when a KLM official first heard of the crash he wanted to send a pilot to the investigation: Veldhuizen), rolled toward takeoff without getting tower clearance to do so? Even defensive Dutch authorities agreed that "no takeoff clearance had been given...
This week reality stepped in. Late Sunday afternoon, a Pan American 747, chartered out of Los Angeles and laden with at least 394 crew and passengers, was taxiing along a foggy runway at Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. On an intersecting runway, a KLM 747, chartered out of Amsterdam and carrying a reported 249 people, was preparing to take off. The KLM captain gave his jet engines full power and roared down the runway-just as the Pan Am 747 taxied across his path. The two planes collided broadside. Flames and smoke towered into...