Word: klm
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...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...
...years experience, actually been directed by the tower to take an awkward, 135° backward exit onto Tenerife's ramp C-3 rather than use the more gently angled ramp C4? Grubbs was heading toward C-4 as he moved to get in position behind the KLM plane to make his own takeoff. If he had made the earlier turn, he might have been clear of the runway before the KLM 747 reached that exit point...
...KLM pilot not heard the Pan Am Clipper's report that it had not yet cleared the runway and would report again when it had? Or had the KLM crew somehow mistaken the Pan Am message to mean that the Clipper had, rather than had not, cleared the runway? Even if there had been such a misunderstanding, of course, the KLM pilot should have awaited the tower O.K. to proceed...
...sister aircraft that had so disastrously converged in the distant Canary Islands fell victim to split seconds of bad luck. There was every evidence that KLM Pilot Veldhuizen had heroically pulled the nose of his huge craft abruptly into the air to leapfrog over the Clipper. Pilot Grubbs was also violently yanking his ship to the left to get out of the way. Experts estimate that the KLM plane needed only 25 ft. of added altitude to avoid the collision, saving the Pan Am passengers. Whether Veldhuizen could have controlled his plane to avoid crashing is questionable. "He probably knew...