On this day, 48 years ago, on March 27, 1977 (February 8, 1977 in the lunar calendar), two Spanish Boeing 747 passenger aircraft collided and occurred in the Tenerife disaster. The Tenerife Disaster (Dutch: Vliegtuigrampvan Tenerife) was an air disaster that occurred on the evening of March 27, 1977. Two Boeing 747 passenger aircraft collided at high speed on the runway of Los Rodeo Airport in the Canary Islands (now the "North Tenerife Airport ") in the Autonomous Territory of Spain's North Africa, resulting in as many as 583 passengers and crew on board. The tragedy of death. If the casualties on the ground are excluded, this air crash is still the deadliest air crash to date, and it was also the aviation accident with the largest total casualties before the September 11 incident. Although the Tenerife crash took place on the island of Tenerife, the cause of the incident was a terrorist bomb attack in Las Palmas, the capital of the Canary Islands Autonomous Region. At 1:15 p.m. local time that day, a flower shop exploded in the lobby of Las Palmas International Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional de Las Palmas-Gando, now known as Gran Canaria Airport), but only eight people were injured in the incident, one of whom was seriously injured, because the airport had received warnings before the small bomb exploded. The explosion of the bomb not only caused damage to the airport buildings, but after the explosion, a spokesperson for the Movimientoparala Autodeterminación Independencia del ArchipiélagoCanario (MPAIAC) telephoned Spanish airlines authorities from Algeria, stating that they were the masterminds of the explosion and that there was another bomb in the airport. This situation forced the air traffic control authorities and the local police to close the airport and evacuate and conduct a comprehensive search. The air traffic control unit had to divert all international flights bound here to the neighboring Los Rodeo Airport at the northern tip of Tenerife. This airport is a small regional airport with only one runway and very limited apron capacity. After a large number of diverted flights poured in, chaos suddenly broke out. The tarmac and taxiways were crowded with aircraft waiting for the main island airport to reopen. Both parties to the accident: KLM VS Pan Am Flight 4805 (hereinafter referred to as KLM), one of the parties to the accident, KLM (aviation code KL/KLM, hereinafter referred to as KLM), was a Boeing 747 - 206B wide-bodied passenger aircraft with registration number PH-BUF and using Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7W engines. KL4805 was a charter flight operated by KLM on behalf of Dutch International Travel Group. It departed from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at 9:31 a.m. that day and arrived in the Canary Islands from the Netherlands with 235 passengers. The flight crew flying the aircraft was led by Captain Jacob Wighutzen van Zanton, a very experienced pilot under KLM, with more than 12,000 hours of flying experience and serving as a training officer for new pilots for many years. After a four-hour flight, Flight KL4805 landed at Los Rodeo Airport at 1:10 p.m. local time, and, like many aircraft that had long been diverted here, crowded into a temporary parking area composed of the airport's main tarmac and main taxiway (taxiway 7), waiting for the restart of Las Palmas Airport. KLM has a rule that strictly limits the time crew can spend on duty during a mission. If you exceed the limit, you will be severely punished and a crew member will need to be replaced to fly the flight. Because of this diversion, the crew of Flight 4805 was very close to the time limit, making Captain Van Zanton very anxious. To save some time, he decided to fill up the plane while waiting so that refueling would no longer be needed for the rest of the flight. On the other hand, Flight 1736 (hereinafter referred to as PA1736) belonging to Pan Am (Air Code PA/PAA) landed at Los Rodeo Airport at 1:45 p.m. This is a Boeing 747 - 121 passenger aircraft with registration number N736PA. It uses a Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A engine. After taking off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX/KLAX), landing halfway at JFK/KJFK) to refuel and replace crew members, and then flying to the Canary Islands. The flight had 364 passengers when it left Los Angeles, but 14 more people were on board when it was in New York. PA1736 was also a charter flight that carried many retirement-age passengers who were going to Gran Canaria to cruise the Mediterranean on the Royal Cruises Line's luxury cruise ship Golden Odyssey. Pan Am's captain was Victor Grub, who had 21,000 flying hours. Although he once asked ground air traffic controllers to let them hover directly in the sky and wait for Las Palmas Airport to restart rather than divert before taking off and landing at their destination, he was still commanded to land at Los Rodeo Airport, joining the almost full fleet of large and small aircraft on the ground. The relative position of the air crash scene that should not have occurred and the map of the two shifts of maneuver. The red dot is the collision point between the two aircraft. At about 4 p.m. that day, Los Rodeo's tower received a message from Las Palmas that the latter was about to reopen, so the crew members of each flight also began to prepare for another take-off, but at the same time, the airport was gradually shrouded in fog and the vision gradually deteriorated. Since the passengers on Flight PA1736 did not disembark but were waiting in place, they should have the priority of taking off and departing first when the destination airport reopened. However, just as the plane was halfway taxiing and wanted to enter the taxiway leading to Runway 12, Pan Am pilots found that they were blocked by the huge KL4805. With the remaining width of the road, they were forced to wait for the passengers to disembark and rest at the airport. After the KL4805 was ready for check-in again and left the waiting area, it followed into the sky. KL4805 called the tower at 16:56 to ask for permission to taxi. The tower agreed. In addition to KL4805, the tower also allowed PA1736 to leave the waiting area, followed the KLM passenger aircraft in front of it taxied on the main runway, and instructed them to turn and leave the main runway at the third exit on the left of the main runway. At this time, Flight PA1736 had taxied between C1 (Exit 1) and C2 (Exit 2). The Pan Am crew learned by checking the airport map that C3 (Exit 3) was a 135 ° turn to the left, which is very difficult for a large aircraft like the Boeing 747 to make a 135 ° turn at such a small airport. After the incident, it was learned that the crew tried to contact the tower to confirm whether it was indeed exit C3. The tower emphasized that it was indeed the "third exit on the left." The crew was confused but did not report in detail the difficulty of turning at Exit C3 to the tower. After some analysis, they believed that when the tower first issued instructions on the turning path, they had already passed the C1 exit. The "third exit on the left" mentioned by the tower should refer to the C4 (Exit 4) three steps forward, because the turning angle between the C4 exit and the main runway is only 45 ° in terms of the taxiing direction of the Pan Am flight, which seems more reasonable. In the end, the crew did not report to the tower and decided to continue to advance to exit C4 before turning away from the runway. The other party, KL4805, contacted the tower during fast taxiing to the waiting area near the starting point of Runway 30. At that time, the order given by the tower was "Okay, please make a 180-degree turn at the end of the runway, and report that preparations are ready and wait for air traffic control clearance"(O.K., At the end of the incident, the fog at the airport was very heavy, with visibility only 300 meters. Neither the airport tower nor the pilots of Pan Am and KLM could see each other's movements. Coupled with the failure of the runway center lights at the airport and the lack of ground radar to display the aircraft's position, the chaos was undoubtedly exacerbated. The radio communication records on the day of the incident are from the original records of the black box of the Dutch flight on the day of the incident. Shortly after KL4805 arrived at the starting point of Runway 30, the captain released the brake and pushed the throttle lever to prepare for take-off. However, the co-captain immediately stopped it in time on the grounds that he had not received the takeoff air traffic control permission from the tower, and then asked the tower to take off. The tower issued an ATCclearancefortainrouteaftertake-off, but did not issue an ATCclearancefortake-off. The KLM captain mistakenly believed that they had been authorized to take off. When KLM accelerated before starting to take off, the co-pilot radioed to inform the tower that they were taking off. At that time, the tower staff could not hear clearly whether the co-pilot's strong Dutch accent in English meant "Weareattakeoff" or "Wearetakingoff", so he replied,"Okay, stand by to take off, we will inform you!" (OK.... Standbyfortakeoff.... Wewillcallyou!) Unexpectedly, during the second half of the radio communication, the Pan American captain reported,"We are still taxiing on the runway!" (Wearestilltaxiingdowntherunway!) The signal was sent to the cover station, but the KLM crew only heard the tower say "OK" but did not hear the second half of the conversation. Although KLM's flight engineers had questioned whether the tower had authorized the take-off, the captain knew that if he did not take off, the duty limit would be exceeded, and he was already very anxious due to the delay of several hours, so he arbitrarily gave a positive answer. At that time, it was shrouded in fog and visibility was only 300 meters. The crew did not know that PA1736 was taxiing on the runway, so they forcibly refueled and took off. At 17:03, shortly after Pan Am's captain reported to the tower for the last time that they were taxiing on the runway, just as they passed Exit 3 and were about to bend into taxiway 4 to head to the take-off waiting area, the co-pilot suddenly noticed a landing light from a KLM passenger plane far away from the runway. At first, they thought that KLM was in a static state waiting to take off, but on closer inspection, they found that the landing lights were shaking and getting closer and closer to them. The KL4805 was actually in Mercedes-Benz state. There were only nine seconds before the collision occurred. Pan Am's co-pilot shouted to the captain to drive the plane away from the main runway. The captain immediately advanced at full speed and let the plane rush into the grass next to the runway, but it was too late. At the same time, KLM's crew still had not discovered the Pan Am passenger plane, so the co-pilot called the captain to make a take-off maneuver: "V1". Four seconds before the collision, the KLM crew finally discovered the Pan Am passenger jet that was desperately dodging on the runway. A computer simulation image of the moment before the accident (part of the fog was eliminated to show the two passenger planes) Although the KLM captain tried his best to make the plane roll over and climb after seeing the Pan Am passenger plane across the runway in front of him, the take-off angle of attack was so large that the tail of the plane scraped a 20-meter-long deep ditch on the runway ground, because the fuselage was so heavy that it was difficult to pull up in advance and could not save the overall situation. The plane collided with the Pan Am passenger plane as soon as it left the ground. The two engines on the right side of the KLM passenger plane hit the midsection of the Pan Am passenger plane, and the left engine was immediately ripped off. KLM fuel leaked and its right wing exploded. It lost control in the air 30 meters and fell to the ground 150 meters away, exploding and burned. The Pan-American airliner, which was hit hard, burst into flames in an instant. The entire aircraft broke into several pieces, and only the left wing and tail remained roughly the same after the incident. After the accident, air traffic controllers at the airport tower heard only the explosion but did not know why it happened, thinking that the airport had been bombed. Air traffic controllers did not know the severity of the incident until another flight circling the airport informed the tower that they had spotted faint flames and smoke on the runway. Also due to thick fog, firefighters did not know that another plane was burning a few hundred meters away until 20 minutes later. Because the entire KLM passenger plane was trapped in the sea of fire and burning violently at that time, the fire brigade had difficulty in putting out the fire and believed that the chances of survival on board were slim, rescue work was immediately concentrated on the Pan Am passenger plane. In the end, the fire caused by the collision of two passenger planes was not extinguished until the next afternoon. Casualty statistics: 583 people died. No passenger on KLM was spared. In this world-shocking tragedy, the collision of two planes killed 583 people, ranking first in civil aviation history with unprecedented severity at that time. Even though the death toll of 520 people in the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 on August 12, 1985 broke the record for the death toll on a single aircraft, the total number of victims still did not exceed the Canary disaster. In the September 11 incident on September 11, 2001, a total of 2752 people died at the scene of the World Trade Center in New York, making it the deadliest casualty in an aircraft-related disaster in history. However, 2595 people in the incident were victims on the ground in the building. In fact, only 157 passengers and crew members were killed on board American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. Flight KL4805: There were 234 passengers and 14 crew members on board at the time of the accident. Most of the passengers were Dutch, as well as 2 Australians, 4 Germans, and 2 Americans. No one on board was spared during the incident (one of the passengers on board escaped because he lived in Tenerife and separated from the group when the plane let passengers off the plane to rest). Flight PA1736: At the time of the accident, there were 382 passengers and 14 crew members on board, of which 326 passengers and 9 crew members died, most of them due to fire after the explosion of the fuel-loaded plane. However, there were still many survivors in the nose and tail parts of the aircraft, including 56 passengers and 5 crew members. Among them, Pan American's captain, co-captain and flight engineer also escaped. Accident investigation: A total of about 70 accident investigators from Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as representatives of airlines from both sides of the accident, were involved in the entire investigation process by the KLM crew's "erroneous interpretation of the communication content" and the Pan Am crew's "erroneous identification". Investigation revealed that the KLM crew's "erroneous interpretation of the content of the communication" and the Pan Am crew's "erroneous belief" that the tower required them to enter the C4 exit were the main causes of the disaster. Subsequent analysis of the black box's call records showed that the airport tower's notice to ask the Dutch flight to wait at the departure point at the time of the incident was mistakenly interpreted by the latter as authorization to take off. Although there is still a lot of controversy, the following are the main reasons that are generally recognized for the accident: ¢Ù The KLM captain forcibly took off without obtaining confirmation from an air traffic control permit.¢Ú The KLM captain did not suspend the take-off operation in time when he heard the Pan Am crew report that it was still taxiing on the runway.¢Û When KLM's flight engineer questioned the captain whether Pan Am had given up the main runway, the KLM captain hastily made a positive judgment. ¢Ü Radio communication problems (communication interruption occurs when one crew is simultaneously talking to another crew and the tower).¢Û The co-pilot of the KLM flight used non-standard terminology during the conversation with the tower.¢Ü Weather problems, heavy fog affects line of sight, which affects the driving response time of the two passenger aircraft.On this day, 48 years ago, on March 27, 1977 (February 8, 1977 in the lunar calendar), two Spanish Boeing 747 passenger aircraft collided and occurred in the Tenerife disaster. The Tenerife Disaster (Dutch: Vliegtuigrampvan Tenerife) was an air disaster that occurred on the evening of March 27, 1977. Two Boeing 747 passenger aircraft collided at high speed on the runway of Los Rodeo Airport in the Canary Islands (now the "North Tenerife Airport ") in the Autonomous Territory of Spain's North Africa, resulting in as many as 583 passengers and crew on board. The tragedy of death. If the casualties on the ground are excluded, this air crash is still the deadliest air crash to date, and it was also the aviation accident with the largest total casualties before the September 11 incident. Although the Tenerife crash took place on the island of Tenerife, the cause of the incident was a terrorist bomb attack in Las Palmas, the capital of the Canary Islands Autonomous Region. At 1:15 p.m. local time that day, a flower shop exploded in the lobby of Las Palmas International Airport (Aeropuerto Internacional de Las Palmas-Gando, now known as Gran Canaria Airport), but only eight people were injured in the incident, one of whom was seriously injured, because the airport had received warnings before the small bomb exploded. The explosion of the bomb not only caused damage to the airport buildings, but after the explosion, a spokesperson for the Movimientoparala Autodeterminación Independencia del ArchipiélagoCanario (MPAIAC) telephoned Spanish airlines authorities from Algeria, stating that they were the masterminds of the explosion and that there was another bomb in the airport. This situation forced the air traffic control authorities and the local police to close the airport and evacuate and conduct a comprehensive search. The air traffic control unit had to divert all international flights bound here to the neighboring Los Rodeo Airport at the northern tip of Tenerife. This airport is a small regional airport with only one runway and very limited apron capacity. After a large number of diverted flights poured in, chaos suddenly broke out. The tarmac and taxiways were crowded with aircraft waiting for the main island airport to reopen. Both parties to the accident: KLM VS Pan Am Flight 4805 (hereinafter referred to as KLM), one of the parties to the accident, KLM (aviation code KL/KLM, hereinafter referred to as KLM), was a Boeing 747 - 206B wide-bodied passenger aircraft with registration number PH-BUF and using Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7W engines. KL4805 was a charter flight operated by KLM on behalf of Dutch International Travel Group. It departed from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam at 9:31 a.m. that day and arrived in the Canary Islands from the Netherlands with 235 passengers. The flight crew flying the aircraft was led by Captain Jacob Wighutzen van Zanton, a very experienced pilot under KLM, with more than 12,000 hours of flying experience and serving as a training officer for new pilots for many years. After a four-hour flight, Flight KL4805 landed at Los Rodeo Airport at 1:10 p.m. local time, and, like many aircraft that had long been diverted here, crowded into a temporary parking area composed of the airport's main tarmac and main taxiway (taxiway 7), waiting for the restart of Las Palmas Airport. KLM has a rule that strictly limits the time crew can spend on duty during a mission. If you exceed the limit, you will be severely punished and a crew member will need to be replaced to fly the flight. Because of this diversion, the crew of Flight 4805 was very close to the time limit, making Captain Van Zanton very anxious. To save some time, he decided to fill up the plane while waiting so that refueling would no longer be needed for the rest of the flight. On the other hand, Flight 1736 (hereinafter referred to as PA1736) belonging to Pan Am (Air Code PA/PAA) landed at Los Rodeo Airport at 1:45 p.m. This is a Boeing 747 - 121 passenger aircraft with registration number N736PA. It uses a Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A engine. After taking off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX/KLAX), landing halfway at JFK/KJFK) to refuel and replace crew members, and then flying to the Canary Islands. The flight had 364 passengers when it left Los Angeles, but 14 more people were on board when it was in New York. PA1736 was also a charter flight that carried many retirement-age passengers who were going to Gran Canaria to cruise the Mediterranean on the Royal Cruises Line's luxury cruise ship Golden Odyssey. Pan Am's captain was Victor Grub, who had 21,000 flying hours. Although he once asked ground air traffic controllers to let them hover directly in the sky and wait for Las Palmas Airport to restart rather than divert before taking off and landing at their destination, he was still commanded to land at Los Rodeo Airport, joining the almost full fleet of large and small aircraft on the ground. The relative position of the air crash scene that should not have occurred and the map of the two shifts of maneuver. The red dot is the collision point between the two aircraft. At about 4 p.m. that day, Los Rodeo's tower received a message from Las Palmas that the latter was about to reopen, so the crew members of each flight also began to prepare for another take-off, but at the same time, the airport was gradually shrouded in fog and the vision gradually deteriorated. Since the passengers on Flight PA1736 did not disembark but were waiting in place, they should have the priority of taking off and departing first when the destination airport reopened. However, just as the plane was halfway taxiing and wanted to enter the taxiway leading to Runway 12, Pan Am pilots found that they were blocked by the huge KL4805. With the remaining width of the road, they were forced to wait for the passengers to disembark and rest at the airport. After the KL4805 was ready for check-in again and left the waiting area, it followed into the sky. KL4805 called the tower at 16:56 to ask for permission to taxi. The tower agreed. In addition to KL4805, the tower also allowed PA1736 to leave the waiting area, followed the KLM passenger aircraft in front of it taxied on the main runway, and instructed them to turn and leave the main runway at the third exit on the left of the main runway. At this time, Flight PA1736 had taxied between C1 (Exit 1) and C2 (Exit 2). The Pan Am crew learned by checking the airport map that C3 (Exit 3) was a 135 ° turn to the left, which is very difficult for a large aircraft like the Boeing 747 to make a 135 ° turn at such a small airport. After the incident, it was learned that the crew tried to contact the tower to confirm whether it was indeed exit C3. The tower emphasized that it was indeed the "third exit on the left." The crew was confused but did not report in detail the difficulty of turning at Exit C3 to the tower. After some analysis, they believed that when the tower first issued instructions on the turning path, they had already passed the C1 exit. The "third exit on the left" mentioned by the tower should refer to the C4 (Exit 4) three steps forward, because the turning angle between the C4 exit and the main runway is only 45 ° in terms of the taxiing direction of the Pan Am flight, which seems more reasonable. In the end, the crew did not report to the tower and decided to continue to advance to exit C4 before turning away from the runway. The other party, KL4805, contacted the tower during fast taxiing to the waiting area near the starting point of Runway 30. At that time, the order given by the tower was "Okay, please make a 180-degree turn at the end of the runway, and report that preparations are ready and wait for air traffic control clearance"(O.K., At the end of the incident, the fog at the airport was very heavy, with visibility only 300 meters. Neither the airport tower nor the pilots of Pan Am and KLM could see each other's movements. Coupled with the failure of the runway center lights at the airport and the lack of ground radar to display the aircraft's position, the chaos was undoubtedly exacerbated. The radio communication records on the day of the incident are from the original records of the black box of the Dutch flight on the day of the incident. Shortly after KL4805 arrived at the starting point of Runway 30, the captain released the brake and pushed the throttle lever to prepare for take-off. However, the co-captain immediately stopped it in time on the grounds that he had not received the takeoff air traffic control permission from the tower, and then asked the tower to take off. The tower issued an ATCclearancefortainrouteaftertake-off, but did not issue an ATCclearancefortake-off. The KLM captain mistakenly believed that they had been authorized to take off. When KLM accelerated before starting to take off, the co-pilot radioed to inform the tower that they were taking off. At that time, the tower staff could not hear clearly whether the co-pilot's strong Dutch accent in English meant "Weareattakeoff" or "Wearetakingoff", so he replied,"Okay, stand by to take off, we will inform you!" (OK.... Standbyfortakeoff.... Wewillcallyou!) Unexpectedly, during the second half of the radio communication, the Pan American captain reported,"We are still taxiing on the runway!" (Wearestilltaxiingdowntherunway!) The signal was sent to the cover station, but the KLM crew only heard the tower say "OK" but did not hear the second half of the conversation. Although KLM's flight engineers had questioned whether the tower had authorized the take-off, the captain knew that if he did not take off, the duty limit would be exceeded, and he was already very anxious due to the delay of several hours, so he arbitrarily gave a positive answer. At that time, it was shrouded in fog and visibility was only 300 meters. The crew did not know that PA1736 was taxiing on the runway, so they forcibly refueled and took off. At 17:03, shortly after Pan Am's captain reported to the tower for the last time that they were taxiing on the runway, just as they passed Exit 3 and were about to bend into taxiway 4 to head to the take-off waiting area, the co-pilot suddenly noticed a landing light from a KLM passenger plane far away from the runway. At first, they thought that KLM was in a static state waiting to take off, but on closer inspection, they found that the landing lights were shaking and getting closer and closer to them. The KL4805 was actually in Mercedes-Benz state. There were only nine seconds before the collision occurred. Pan Am's co-pilot shouted to the captain to drive the plane away from the main runway. The captain immediately advanced at full speed and let the plane rush into the grass next to the runway, but it was too late. At the same time, KLM's crew still had not discovered the Pan Am passenger plane, so the co-pilot called the captain to make a take-off maneuver: "V1". Four seconds before the collision, the KLM crew finally discovered the Pan Am passenger jet that was desperately dodging on the runway. A computer simulation image of the moment before the accident (part of the fog was eliminated to show the two passenger planes) Although the KLM captain tried his best to make the plane roll over and climb after seeing the Pan Am passenger plane across the runway in front of him, the take-off angle of attack was so large that the tail of the plane scraped a 20-meter-long deep ditch on the runway ground, because the fuselage was so heavy that it was difficult to pull up in advance and could not save the overall situation. The plane collided with the Pan Am passenger plane as soon as it left the ground. The two engines on the right side of the KLM passenger plane hit the midsection of the Pan Am passenger plane, and the left engine was immediately ripped off. KLM fuel leaked and its right wing exploded. It lost control in the air 30 meters and fell to the ground 150 meters away, exploding and burned. The Pan-American airliner, which was hit hard, burst into flames in an instant. The entire aircraft broke into several pieces, and only the left wing and tail remained roughly the same after the incident. After the accident, air traffic controllers at the airport tower heard only the explosion but did not know why it happened, thinking that the airport had been bombed. Air traffic controllers did not know the severity of the incident until another flight circling the airport informed the tower that they had spotted faint flames and smoke on the runway. Also due to thick fog, firefighters did not know that another plane was burning a few hundred meters away until 20 minutes later. Because the entire KLM passenger plane was trapped in the sea of fire and burning violently at that time, the fire brigade had difficulty in putting out the fire and believed that the chances of survival on board were slim, rescue work was immediately concentrated on the Pan Am passenger plane. In the end, the fire caused by the collision of two passenger planes was not extinguished until the next afternoon. Casualty statistics: 583 people died. No passenger on KLM was spared. In this world-shocking tragedy, the collision of two planes killed 583 people, ranking first in civil aviation history with unprecedented severity at that time. Even though the death toll of 520 people in the crash of Japan Airlines Flight 123 on August 12, 1985 broke the record for the death toll on a single aircraft, the total number of victims still did not exceed the Canary disaster. In the September 11 incident on September 11, 2001, a total of 2752 people died at the scene of the World Trade Center in New York, making it the deadliest casualty in an aircraft-related disaster in history. However, 2595 people in the incident were victims on the ground in the building. In fact, only 157 passengers and crew members were killed on board American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. Flight KL4805: There were 234 passengers and 14 crew members on board at the time of the accident. Most of the passengers were Dutch, as well as 2 Australians, 4 Germans, and 2 Americans. No one on board was spared during the incident (one of the passengers on board escaped because he lived in Tenerife and separated from the group when the plane let passengers off the plane to rest). Flight PA1736: At the time of the accident, there were 382 passengers and 14 crew members on board, of which 326 passengers and 9 crew members died, most of them due to fire after the explosion of the fuel-loaded plane. However, there were still many survivors in the nose and tail parts of the aircraft, including 56 passengers and 5 crew members. Among them, Pan American's captain, co-captain and flight engineer also escaped. Accident investigation: A total of about 70 accident investigators from Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as representatives of airlines from both sides of the accident, were involved in the entire investigation process by the KLM crew's "erroneous interpretation of the communication content" and the Pan Am crew's "erroneous identification". Investigation revealed that the KLM crew's "erroneous interpretation of the content of the communication" and the Pan Am crew's "erroneous belief" that the tower required them to enter the C4 exit were the main causes of the disaster. Subsequent analysis of the black box's call records showed that the airport tower's notice to ask the Dutch flight to wait at the departure point at the time of the incident was mistakenly interpreted by the latter as authorization to take off. Although there is still a lot of controversy, the following are the main reasons that are generally recognized for the accident: ¢Ù The KLM captain forcibly took off without obtaining confirmation from an air traffic control permit.¢Ú The KLM captain did not suspend the take-off operation in time when he heard the Pan Am crew report that it was still taxiing on the runway.¢Û When KLM's flight engineer questioned the captain whether Pan Am had given up the main runway, the KLM captain hastily made a positive judgment. ¢Ü Radio communication problems (communication interruption occurs when one crew is simultaneously talking to another crew and the tower).¢Û The co-pilot of the KLM flight used non-standard terminology during the conversation with the tower.¢Ü Weather problems, heavy fog affects line of sight, which affects the driving response time of the two passenger aircraft.