Tenerife airport collision (1977)
On March 27, 1977, a KLM and a Pan Am Boeing 747 collided on the runway at Los Rodeos, Tenerife: 583 dead. It is the deadliest accident in civil aviation and the textbook case of two total hull losses in a single event.
The Tenerife collision is the runway crash between the KLM and Pan Am widebodies at Los Rodeos, the deadliest accident in civil aviation. On March 27, 1977, a bomb at Las Palmas airport on Gran Canaria diverted traffic to Los Rodeos, a Tenerife field too small for the flow of widebodies. In fog, the KLM 747 (flight 4805) began its takeoff roll without clearance while the Pan Am 747 (flight 1736) was still taxiing on the same runway. 583 dead; 61 survivors, all on the Pan Am aircraft. For the market, Tenerife is above all an accumulation case. Two total hull losses from one event, two separate insurance programs, and passengers of two carriers whose limits depended on the Warsaw regime governing each ticket. The Spanish report named the KLM aircraft's takeoff without clearance as the main cause. Dutch investigators stressed a radio misunderstanding shared with the tower. Underwriters still cite Tenerife for two reasons. It sets the order of magnitude for a collision between two widebodies, the scenario airport and reinsurance pool accumulation models use. And it shows that a major air loss rarely has one cause: a bombing, a congested field, weather and phraseology added up. The reform that followed, reserving the word takeoff for the actual clearance, is a loss prevention measure insurers find in every operator audit.
In an airport accumulation model, the reference scenario is often still Tenerife: two full widebodies destroyed on the same runway, two total hull losses and two passenger liabilities triggered together. Reinsurers of an aviation pool check how many of their cedents could sit on both aircraft at once.
Tenerife airport disaster, Los Rodeos collision, KLM 4805, Pan Am 1736
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