Fatal Appointment in Tenerife

When the giant Boeing 747 jetliner went into commercial service in 1970, air industry professionals and the public alike feared one thing: the horrendous disasters that could befall a plane built to carry nearly 400 passengers. Yet the 747 has proved remarkably lucky in the years since, carrying 140 million passengers and logging 2.25 billion air miles with only two fatal mishaps. When the first major wide-bodied aircraft accident did occur, near Paris in 1974, it was a Turkish Air Lines DC-10 that carried 346 people to their deaths. The 747 seemed destined to suffer mainly in movie fancy--in a mid-air collision in Airport 75, in a crash at sea in Airport 77.

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 the sky. Sirens screamed. Ambulances and residents of Tenerife rushed to the crash scene to help. There was little they could do. As the grim count went on, at least 514 were feared dead--by far the worst disaster in aviation history.

The bitter irony of the day was that neither plane had been scheduled to land at Tenerife at all. Both had been headed for El Gando Airport in Las Palmas on Grand Canary Island some 50 miles away. In a plot twist that even Hollywood would have thought farfetched, a bomb had exploded in a vase in a flower shop at El Gando shortly before the planes were due to land there. Both were diverted to Tenerife--and had been cleared to resume their journeys when the fatal encounter occurred.

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