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A review by xxstefaniereadsxx
Collision on Tenerife: The How and Why of the World's Worst Aviation Disaster by Caroline Hopkins, Jon Ziomek
informative
medium-paced
3.0
On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 passenger aircraft collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport. The airport is located in Tenerife, Spain, but is operating under a different name now. The collision involved two flights that had been diverted to that airport following a bomb explosion in their scheduled airport. KLM Flight 4805 had begun to takeoff while PAN AM Flight 1736 remained on the runway. The KLM plane did not clear the PAN AM plane, slamming the tail and landing hear into PAN AM. There were no survivors from the KLM flight, resulting in the deaths of 248 passengers and crew. PAN AM fared slightly better, with 335 deaths and 61 survivors.
This whole fiasco was the result of several errors. Obviously, I am not an aviation expert, but having a bunch of diverted planes that are piled up seems dangerous and stressful. If you have people in air traffic control not paying close attention to where planes are...it is asking for a disaster. It is thought that there was a soccer game and other conversations going on in the tower, which may have added to the confusion and distraction. Ground radar was not in use, which would have helped tremendously in the dense fog conditions that were also occurring at the time. Runway lights were not functioning. There has also been blame placed on the crews of both flights for distraction, wanting to rush out of there, and miscommunication. The PAN AM flight did not exit the runway as instructed, though the instruction clarity can be debated. Despite the factors, a lot of people lost their lives. A lot of people lost someone they cared about. A lot of people were injured terribly and traumatized from this event.
This book was very informative. It had statements from survivors and family members of those on the flights. It was really tense to listen to because you knew there was going to be a disaster, but you didn't know when it was coming. Hearing what happened to those people was unnerving. This book is currently free to listen to on Audible Plus, and if you have that option and are interested in this type of subject matter, I recommend this book for you.
This whole fiasco was the result of several errors. Obviously, I am not an aviation expert, but having a bunch of diverted planes that are piled up seems dangerous and stressful. If you have people in air traffic control not paying close attention to where planes are...it is asking for a disaster. It is thought that there was a soccer game and other conversations going on in the tower, which may have added to the confusion and distraction. Ground radar was not in use, which would have helped tremendously in the dense fog conditions that were also occurring at the time. Runway lights were not functioning. There has also been blame placed on the crews of both flights for distraction, wanting to rush out of there, and miscommunication. The PAN AM flight did not exit the runway as instructed, though the instruction clarity can be debated. Despite the factors, a lot of people lost their lives. A lot of people lost someone they cared about. A lot of people were injured terribly and traumatized from this event.
This book was very informative. It had statements from survivors and family members of those on the flights. It was really tense to listen to because you knew there was going to be a disaster, but you didn't know when it was coming. Hearing what happened to those people was unnerving. This book is currently free to listen to on Audible Plus, and if you have that option and are interested in this type of subject matter, I recommend this book for you.