Who was the American student who predicted the PANAM/KLM crash in Tenerife?

Answer 1

Nobody predicted that accident of two fully loaded, fully fuelled 747's colliding almost head-on on a runway, except you could look at it and say that it was a dangerous situation from all the confusion, stress, and fog from the beginning.

Here are the contributing factors:

PanAm - the plane stayed on the runway too long, they should have exited the runway earlier. Also the captian was irritated that he landed here in the first place, and was very anxiuos to get going, as were all the other planes

Controller - didn't use standard radio procedures, and was distracted watching a football game on a TV in the control tower.

Airport - there were way more planes there than normal due to a bomb scare at nearby Las Palmas, so they were diverted to Tenerife.

Weather - very thick fog

KLM - the flight crew had to get airborne quickly or they would have exceeded their maximum duty time. The captain was the most senior 747 training pilot at KLM, and the co-pilot and flight engineer were afraid to challenge his authority with enough aggression, even though they recognized impending doom in the fog. The co-pilot (FO) and the flight engineer both suspected that the PanAm plane was still on the runway, but they were scared of insulting this particular captain by aborting the take-off.

Bad Luck - the KLM crew couldn't hear a critical radio call from the tower due to a simultaneous radio transmission from the PanAm plane and the controller.

Like most human-error aviation accidents, this one was the result of a long chain of events that culminated in the KLM captain initiating his take-off without the proper authority. This accident is a classic study in Cockpit Resource Management.

Answer 2

You what!! Nobody predicted that!! surely. I've read the documentation on that tradegy, very sad. In my view it was almost entirely the fault of the KLM polit for the entire accident, with part of the blame residing with the spanish air traffic controlers, the pan-am crew were least to blame.

Silly accident- could easily have been avoided.

Answer 3

Not known.