It was a stormy night in Tenerife. The rain beat down on the Spanish island’s small airport, and a dense
fog prowled in from the sea, covering the tarmac in gray.
Inside Pan Am Flight 1736, the passengers were getting restless. They had boarded in Los Angeles some
13 hours ago and were now stuck on this tarmac, unable to leave. The crew was exhausted, and with no
food or drink left, there wasn’t much anybody could do. None of them were even supposed to be there;
the flight had been diverted to Tenerife because of a bomb explosion at their original destination. So,
when the announcement came that Pan Am was cleared to startup and taxi, the aircraft erupted in cheers.
A few minutes earlier, the control tower had instructed another plane, KLM Flight 4805, to get ready for
takeoff. There was only one runway at this airport, so KLM rumbled to one end and made a 180-degree
turn, the full length of the tarmac now ahead of it. Pan-Am was in its way, still taxing into a holding
space, but with the fog so thick and the runway lights out of service, the control tower couldn’t see either
747 — and neither could the pilots.
But the KLM captain was eager to leave. The weather conditions were awful and, if visibility got any
worse, they’d be stuck in Tenerife overnight. So, as the control tower cleared the KLM flight to get ready
for takeoff, the captain misunderstood and began barreling forward.
