Spine-chilling final words spoken during the deadliest plane crash in history
In 1977, 583 lives were claimed when two 747 jets collided with each other on the runway of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. What the captain said in the final minutes stun to this day.
On March 27, 1977, a KLM Boeing 747 and a Pan American Boeing 747 collided on the runway in Tenerife in an event known as the Tenerife airport disaster.
The harrowing crash happened as the oblivious KLM plane launched off the runway towards the Pan Am jet, which was standing directly in its way.
A catastrophic fire resulted, blazing for hours on end. Five-hundred and eighty-three people were killed.
Every single passenger onboard the KLM Boeing 747 died in the horrific accident. Only 61 from the Pan American craft survived - only those in the front section of the plane.
A number of flights had been redirected to the Los Rodeos airport where the accident took place, due to a bomb that had been set off by the Canary Islands Independence Movement at Gran Canaria Airport.
The increased traffic at the airport, as well as heavy fog have been blamed for the disaster. Neither plane could see the other, and air traffic controllers couldn’t either.
Poor communication between both cockpits and air traffic has also been blamed, in part, for the tragedy that day.
KLM captain Veldhuyzen van Zanten tried to take off without clearance, leading to the events.
Thanks to cockpit voice recorders, the final words spoken by the pilots are a matter of public record.
Pan Am captain Victor Grubbs could be heard yelling in the cockpit recording, as he referred to the approaching KLM plane: “Look at him! Goddamn, that son of a b*tch is coming!”
Victor Grubbs and his co-pilot Robert Bragg were among the 61 survivors.
After what happened in Tenerife, international airline regulations were drastically changed: flight crews and air traffic controllers were mandated to use standardized English phrases, decision-making by mutual agreement became the norm, and crew resource management was streamlined, according to PBS.
