I remember reading a book on air disasters some ~10 years ago and this crash and its investigation was one of the main focuses in it. I just happened to find this documentary about it on YouTube. It happened 30+ years ago, but still remains one of the worst disasters in airline history and aside from Crew Resource Management (or CRM), not much has changed in over three decades. The Air Traffic Control system still remains outdated...
Here's the Wiki on it. Be sure to look at the probably cause and speculations about the KML captain. He was a senior sim instructor and one of the most experienced pilots in the company, but spent little time in the "real world" the months before the accident. I can honestly say I've caught similar mistakes made by some guys I've flown with... "sim-isms" sort of, although the outcome at Tenerife was beyond anything I could ever imagine.
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Worst Plane Crash pt 1
Worst Plane Crash pt 2
Worst Plane Crash pt 3
Worst Plane Crash pt 4
Worst Plane Crash pt 5
Worst Plane Crash pt 6
Worst Plane Crash pt 7
Worst Plane Crash pt 8
Worst Plane Crash pt 9
Crash of the Century
The ramifications of this crash were far-reaching. It spawned the CRM (Crew resource management) programs that most frontline airlines use today that help make sure that the authority gradient on a modern airliner is not too steep from the left hand seat to the right.
What has always struck me about this accident is how many things combined in unison to cause the crash and how it could have been averted if just ONE of those things had been changed.
Very sad, but hopefully the entire aviation community learned a lot of lessons from it.
What has always struck me about this accident is how many things combined in unison to cause the crash and how it could have been averted if just ONE of those things had been changed.
Very sad, but hopefully the entire aviation community learned a lot of lessons from it.
I finally had a chance to watch the whole thing this evening - what a horrible example of all the little things...
After I watched it, I started browsing all the related videos and came upon this one - first thing I thought of was our solos! I KNOW both of you would love to do this if you were ferrying an empty aircraft!
...and because I know Bon and Cobra have the discipline of the diamond they would never even think of it!
After I watched it, I started browsing all the related videos and came upon this one - first thing I thought of was our solos! I KNOW both of you would love to do this if you were ferrying an empty aircraft!
...and because I know Bon and Cobra have the discipline of the diamond they would never even think of it!
@Gunner, more like this:
This ol' geezer cracks me up! Priceless comments...
This ol' geezer cracks me up! Priceless comments...
Last edited by Lawndart on Fri Jun 06, 2008 2:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ferry flights are the time to do all the stuff you can't do with passengers onboard.
The 767-300's we have are simply awesome when empty. So the drill is (was for me) to do a full power take-off (trying to hang on to the tigers tail..) rotate to 30 degrees nose up ( I am not kidding) and try to see how many track miles it takes you to reach 43000 feet. (the record is 50, flying into a jetstream).
You follow up by waiting till 50 miles past the normal descent point and practice your emergency descent, then land using max-autobrakes and see how quickly you can pull up. This is an amazing plane and remains my true love.
The A330 is more.. stately and I have not done a ferry flight on it yet. One of the more interesting things we did in the endorsement sims though was to wait till rotate speed, pull the stick right back and once you got to 100 feet, put the stick in to back left corner and watch the fly-by-wire do its stuff. We call it a "combat climb" because you circle inside the airfield boundary at 67 degrees AOB and the speed back on the minimum... and up you go. Very impressive and very easy to fly.
The 767-300's we have are simply awesome when empty. So the drill is (was for me) to do a full power take-off (trying to hang on to the tigers tail..) rotate to 30 degrees nose up ( I am not kidding) and try to see how many track miles it takes you to reach 43000 feet. (the record is 50, flying into a jetstream).
You follow up by waiting till 50 miles past the normal descent point and practice your emergency descent, then land using max-autobrakes and see how quickly you can pull up. This is an amazing plane and remains my true love.
The A330 is more.. stately and I have not done a ferry flight on it yet. One of the more interesting things we did in the endorsement sims though was to wait till rotate speed, pull the stick right back and once you got to 100 feet, put the stick in to back left corner and watch the fly-by-wire do its stuff. We call it a "combat climb" because you circle inside the airfield boundary at 67 degrees AOB and the speed back on the minimum... and up you go. Very impressive and very easy to fly.
