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Friday, March 31, 2006
Tenerife Air Disasters in Perspective
Whilst much has been written about the March 1997 crash at Tenerife's Los Rodeos airport - and not to worry anyone here - but did you know that four air crashes had occurred on the island since 1965?
And, three of them, lamentably, make it into the Top 100 Aviation Disasters. Those three, in order of severity, are:
March 27 1977 - 583 killed - KLM Boeing 747-206B collides with Pan Am Boeing 747-121 on the runway at Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport.
December 3 1972 - 155 killed - Spantax Covair 990-30A-5 Coronado, carrying West German tourists, lost control on take-off from Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport.
April 25 1980 - 146 fatalities - Dan-Air Services B-727-46 flying from Manchester crashed into a mountain south of Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport on approach.
All three accidents happened in fog conditions.
Tenerife's Los Rodeos airport is situated on a 2,000-feet-high plateau, which is subject to cloud descent and sudden dangerous crosswinds, say the British Council.
Of course, it should be remembered that not only does Tenerife now have another, much larger, airport (Reina Sofia) on the south of the island that enjoys much better weather conditions and is further from mountains, an awful lot has changed in the last 26 years, since the date of the last major accident to occur at Los Rodeos.
Logic, if not actual reports, tells us that radar and communications will have come on leaps and bounds since then, so that taking off or landing, even if Los Rodeos is prone to fog (and it is), is no longer quite the danger it was over a quarter of a century ago.
Tenerife Air Traffic Control was implicated (giving wrong directions) in the 1980 Dan Air crash, according to the accident report referred to in comments here, although, neither they, nor the airport itself were found to be to blame in the other two major crashes.
It seems wrong that they are never allowed to "live it down", when this is the proven case. Yes, there are still people who fear flying there. There are those too who think it a disgrace that there is no memorial to crash victims at the airport and accuse the Tenerife authorities of wanting to forget. Whom would it help? Certainly not passengers passing through!
Of course, four crashes is four crashes too many, but the world is not perfect. Four crashes in over 40 years, when, for instance, you take into account the fact that Tenerife's airports combined are set to handle over 73,000 flights during this year's seven month summer season alone, puts the matter into a much better perspective, I think.
Tenerife / Los Rodeos, SPAIN Weather
Tags: Tenerife, Canary Islands, Canarias
Labels: Tenerife Disaster
