Inside the Tenerife Crash

0:03 [Music] okay all right well hi everybody thank you for coming much appreciated um I'm Laura Savino and today I'm going to talk about the tenary fair disaster I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it or somewhat familiar with it uh maybe not everybody but back in 1977 to uh Boeing 747s had a collision on the runway at an island in the Canary Islands on tenar Reef in that accident it's uh still holds a record for the deadliest air disaster in the history of the world 583 people died on that day

0:48 most of them were burned alive uh and there were 52 children and um lots of lessons came out of it I was extremely privileged that I uh in my career got to fly with Bob Bragg Bob was the um first officer on the PanAm aircraft he was the last surviving pilot um from the from the tene accident and flying with him um he gave me a lot of you know inside information about what really went on and what happened what the Poli were thinking it's it's quite a bit different than I think what the generations have you know what the media's put out there over the years so I'm just going to run through that um but just to give you a little bit of history as far as like how it got to the point where I was flying

1:34 with Bob I'm gonna run through I'm gon to make this quick but I'm just going to give you a quick uh background of how I got to become an Earline pilot so now I've listened to like lots of Aviation talks I've been to lots of presentations and it seems like there's a pattern here that every time um a pilot gets up and he starts talking they always start off with the um the the obligatory picture of them as a little child holding an airplane saying I knew since I was 5 years old I wanted to be a pilot and this is what my parents bought me and every you know Christmas Santa brought me a new airplane and all that stuff y yada so I I look back at all my old you know pictures and pretty much all I could come up with was this so when I was a child I pretty much got nothing

2:19 but dolls and when I didn't get a doll I would get a doll and N Out of 10 times that doll was a bride and I had never met a pilot I never met anyone who had ever met a pilot so wasn't anything that was in my purview it was anything that I'd ever heard of I'd never seen an airplane never been on an airplane and yet somehow I made it to become you know International widebody Captain so how did that happen um I'm not going to go through all that uh you know read my book but in a nutshell I got older I got a little rebellious I got my Jarvis license I end up going out exploring I found a ga airport in New Jersey had no idea there was such thing as Journal Aviation had no idea there were small airplanes just had never heard of such a thing I ended up getting a job at the

3:05 airport at the flight school worked my way through flying lessons I essentially worked for free and exchange for flying lessons and then from there I went off to Purdue major in aviation which was really cool and um and then after that it was just a matter of trying to build hours to figure out what I could do with that there was no internet right and so there were no Pathways programs there was no one for me to ask there was no one for me to talk to there really it was it was really like throwing darts figuring out what needed to do to to become a pilot and I did know that if I just put one foot in front of the other one job would lead to the next which would lead to the next which is exactly what happened and I did everything building flight hours back then you needed thousands of hours to get any kind of a real job I did Freight Cargo I was a sightseeing tour pilot for New York City um I was a

3:51 cfwi I uh was a fery pilot faired airplanes let's see um I worked for a banner towing company at the Jersey Shore and uh I was an aircraft repossessor so I was that person you did not want to see walking around your airplane well eventually after years and lots and lots of really horrible flying I got my first Airline job flying for Eastern an Eastern Regional I was flying the door near 228 Northeast Corridor all raw data we flew 10 11 legs a day no magenta line it was just all hand flying and it was amazing it was awesome and I loved every second of it then Frank Lorenzo came in we went on strike everybody got fured I was out in the street but then I got hired by PanAm and I was based out of JFK flying the atr-42 which was also really super cool and um

4:39 that was really fun but then you know pan and went into bankruptcy so I was out on the street again so then I finally and here we are arriving at the beginning of my story I was finally hired by United Airlines and by this point I had thousands of hours um lots of experience and I finally ranked enough to get my application in there and and and get a looking at interviewed and was hired so here I am I got hired by United Airlines my very first seat at United was on the 747 based out of New York so I flew equally out of JFK and out of New York my roots were almost uh the first year are almost all transpacific and um let me just show you the inside so this is this is the inside of the 47 um

5:25 that I flew I flew 100s 200s in the SP and back then the flight engineer it was it was a real job uh we had no computers on the airplanes um we navigated just using you know nural nav it was really basic and the flight engineer was super busy we did everything by hand from pressurization to um you Electronics the fuel I mean we had let me think we had 11 fuel tanks on this airplane and we constantly had to like keep you know transfer the fuel from the outers to the inners blah blah blah and keep everything balanced it was a lot of work so I was on the 747 and this picture was taken of Me by Bob Bragg the pilot on the PanAm uh km uh crash so when I was in New York um I was

6:14 assigned the 47 and at that time United Airlines had just taken over Pam's transpacific routes their profitable roots and with those routs they took the airplanes and with the airplanes they took the crew that flew the airplane so here I was at United Airlines but I was flying PanAm airplanes on PanAm routes with PanAm Pilots out of Pam's biggest domicile JFK so Bob came over with the PanAm roots to United just a little bit before I got there so I was very fortunate that I got to fly my first year at United first couple years with Bob he lived actually pretty close to me in New York and he became I would say a mentor be before that

7:00 that term was coined I had never heard that word but in hindsight I was at United it was kind of a cening by fire um I was I think the first female in the New York domicile the first one in the 47 and um a lot of the guys weren't too happy to see me you know they were thinking they were very senior they were going to escape you know this circus before this whole diversity thing hit them and then then I showed up so some the guys weren't so nice to me but Bob was amazing he was so kind and so generous and he was just he was just a really wonderful person to fly with and we did a lot of um a lot of we did this is Bob here uh to my left we did a lot of Hawaiian turns we had one trip I flew quite a bit which was JFK to Tokyo Tokyo

7:47 to Honolulu back to Tokyo and then back to New York and Bob was a member of the Honolulu Yacht Club he didn't have a boat or anything but it was a way to get all of us you know into this really nice place for um we always flew red eyes into into Hawaii and so in the mornings we would land and instead of uh you know going to sleep we'd all go to uh to the yacht club with Bob so I would just like to point out this is Bob brag here next to me and that's me back in my youth and this is the first officer and that was the international relief pilot this is what all the crews look like that I flew with back then it was me with my grandpa and my grandpa and my other grandpa and to say I didn't exactly fit in would be an understatement but um but Bob was wonderful to me all right so let's get to why we're here the heart of the

8:33 matter the tenor Reef crash all right what happened and how did this happen so flying with Bob in the exact same 747 that was involved in this crash he brought me through this whole um this whole sequence of events um quite a few times he would take out a piece of paper and he would draw me diagrams and he would just explain everything to me so I really got some some good inside you know on um just uh you know information about really what these Pilots were thinking at that time um right in the moment so here's the accident 1977 uh gr Canaria was the destination for a bunch of airplanes huge vacation um destination beautiful island in the

9:18 Canary Islands now these islands are owned by Spain however they're not really anywhere near Spain they're off the coast of Morocco which is you know Africa but because of international shipping routes and some Maritime laws that went back like you know 100 more years Spain owned the Canary Islands so these planes are all coming into Gran Canaria and a terrorist bomb went off in Gran Canaria right at the airport in the Flor shop so all the planes were stopped and they were diverted and they were sent to another island in the Canary Islands tenie now I'll just note there were multiple airports they could have gone to they could have spread these airplanes out they did did not they sent every single airplane to one tiny Island

10:05 airport that had one single Runway and no place to park these airplanes I think there were 11 airplanes in total that uh that ended up going over there so the PanAm um crew did not want to land at tenar ree they requested they wanted to hold over Grand Canaria they had over two hours of Reserve fuel they they did not see the need to land at tenie they were denied that they were told they had to land and so they did all right while I'm here I'm just going to run through the crew real quick here because I want to make the point these were extremely experienced pilots on PanAm there were 396 Souls on board uh the captain was Victor grubs he had 21,000 hours and um oops hold on here uh Bob brag was the

10:54 um first officer he had 10,000 and then Greg Warren had 15 all right now going over to km again on these airplanes were the most senior Pilots at both of these companies 248 Souls on board the captain was Jacob van zanton he was 50 he had 11,700 hours now he was notable in that he was extremely senior and prestigious at km he was actually the head of the flight training department and he was the um he was the head of the entire 747 Fleet and and in fact the officer clous MN had gotten his typew rating under Jacob van zanton so they knew each other quite well now uh the flight engineer William Shrader this is really

11:40 significant so remember this for later he had more time than both the captain and the first officer he had over 177,000 hours and he was a professional flight engineer which means he wasn't a pilot and he was very proud to not be a pilot he his private but he wasn't a commercial pilot he believed that that very strongly that flight Engineers were systems experts that they were on the aircraft to run the aircraft and that the pilots were there to fly it he was so serious about this and so senior he actually uh founded and was the president of the European professional flight engineer organization all right so moving on all the planes land in tenar well what happens is they're stacked up all over the place because there's no place to

12:26 put all these airplanes and km landed um before PanAm and so they kind of were in the front of the pack and then PanAm came in and landed a parked behind them and there were I think uh like four or five other airplanes just in this one little ramp area which was sort of like the runup apron for Runway one to so they land and the delay is just going on and on and on and they ended up being on the ground for about three and a half hours but while they're waiting um the km aircraft had requested air stairs so their passengers could get off and they got the air stairs and their passengers got off and then uh when PanAm came in subsequent to them they requested air stairs their passengers get off could get off and they were denied because KLM

13:13 had all the air stairs that could reach a 747 so they did eventually get air stairs but it took a couple hours so this picture that you're looking at is an actual picture taken from that day from the km aircraft it was the um the Flying Dutch looking back at the PanAm 747 that was parked behind them so they're on the ground and they were there for such a long time that Captain vanton was getting worried that he was not he was not going to have time when he got to Gran canar when they finally got permission to go there to refuel so he decided to get the aircraft refueled so just after they plugged in and set them up to start refueling

13:59 Grand Canaria opened but because they had just started refueling they couldn't go anywhere so now while they're sitting here on the ground well I have to turn this off here while they're sitting there on the ground um the kin passengers are all in the terminal they refill the aircraft and time is ticking and Bob says you know we're looking at our window and he tells me he goes we see this fog bank that's rolling down the terain now tenar Reef has a volcano on it and it's a huge volcano I think it's actually the third highest volcano in the entire world and because of you know the maritime weather and all that stuff they would get chronic um clouds it

14:44 would roll down off this train and would come over the airport now the airport elevation is was 273 feet so while the people on the beach are watching clouds go overhead the planes at the airport are actually right inside those clouds and so so Bob's sitting here and they're all watching this and they're all getting really antsy the three pilots on panan because they want to go and they can't because km is blocking them and they got to the point where Bob and the flight engineer went outside to walk around the aircraft to see if there was a way they could maneuver the aircraft to get around and Bob paced it off you know with his long legs and he came back and said they were about 12 feet too short you know for wing tip clearance they're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting and it reached the point

15:29 where the PanAm Captain started chiding the km Captain over the frequency kind of embarrassing um asking them when are you going to go how much longer sort of making fun of them so there's a little tension building here right the Captain was actually pretty polite about it it was really the panan pilot that was sort of doing the harassing there so finally they finished refueling and um Ken's done watching the pan and Pils walking around his airplane and embarrassing him they're ready to go and guess what they're missing four people they were missing a family of four they were missing a mom and dad and two little children so they still couldn't go another DeLay So this kept going on and on and on so about an hour and a half later finally after all of this time km uh you know gets everybody up

16:17 they button up and they're ready to go now listening to the cockpit voice recorders they were discussing quite a bit in their cockpit about their flight Duty time so over in the Netherlands they had just changed the laws now of course people that make laws politicians in the public they're not Pilots they're not aviators so they don't know what they're doing right so they actually made it a criminal act a felony for a pilot to fly outside of their Duty times and then they enacted new Duty rigs but these Duty rigs were very um they had a lot of different factors to them so the pilots there was no set time it was something that the company had to calculate progressively so the pilots knew that they Duty limits were coming to a you know coming to a a scary you

17:03 know limit here but the only way they could find out where they stood was to constantly call the HF radio company to say where are we doing now how are we doing now so there was a lot of stress there in that respect all right so finally they button up they're ready to go now there were a lot of links in the chain here any one of them broken and this accident would not have happened so let's go to what actually happened at that at that airport on that Runway All Right we've got this ramp here that's got like five airplanes on it we have km here they're you know a a cork there they're blocking everybody from getting onto the runway they're departing Runway 30 but because there's all these airplanes parked in the taxiway here no

17:49 one can get to 30 other than to enter on one two and Back Taxi down the runway so Kum calls they um get a clearance from the controller and this is where the problems really started so the controllers at tene were not used to handling a lot of traffic and they spoke um they spoke very little English their English was very broken their I phraseology was was missing um they had a very thick Spanish accent now keep in mind km these Pilots all spoke Dutch right so English was a second language to to them then you have the Spanish air traffic controllers English was the second language to them so everybody is speaking a language in a very thick

18:36 accent and so it's there was a lot of difficulty everybody understanding each other so the uh Spanish controller told km um to enter the runway and to take their third third to their left and the km controllers uh Pilots could not understand what they were saying um first first of all also at the tener airport um all the radios were broken but one so they had one frequency and all the controllers or were three controllers were on one frequency so they had every airplane arrivals departures local ground all sharing one frequency and it was it was quite chaotic also in the background Bob tells me the whole time that they're you know

19:21 talking to the controllers there's a Spanish um uh soccer game a football game going on in the background and cheering and and all that stuff so it was very very noisy in the in the tower cab and there was a lot of confusion as to what was coming out of the tower cab to the pilots this is this is what what Bob was saying they were having a lot of trouble understanding them so the Kum Pilots were told to take their third left but they couldn't understand what the controller said so they proceeded on down to the end of the runway the controller then just cleared him to the end of the runway and and they let that go then pinam gets on the um Runway behind km and they start taxing and they were given the exact same clearance that km had been given they were told to take their third left but they couldn't

20:09 understand what the controller said the captain thought he said first Bob wasn't sure he said third the flight engineer thought he said your left um there was an observer who thought they said our left so they were debating what it was that that the controller had given them now something else to point out is this is a beautiful diagram here you know Charlie 1 2 3 4 well these um taxway they had no labels um there was no taxu a signage uh so the controllers never used any terms like turn left and Charlie 3 they were just saying turn left take your third turn or something like that um the Jackson plates did have it labeled but the controllers didn't have those names for the taxiways and there were no signage for the taxiways

20:54 so there was a lot of confusion here so PM is taxing and they figure out okay they're saying third well Charlie one was not an actual um taxi way so they kind of discounted that is not really counting um and then from present position their third left would have been Charlie four and then looking at you know the airport diagram Charlie 2 and Charlie 3 were reverse high speeds well the um it was I think 148 degree turn and the taxi away Charlie 2 and Charlie 3 was only 73 fet wide so the 747 cannot take a reverse highp speed and stay on the hard surface it just they couldn't do it so they you know subsequently some blame was put on the

21:41 panand Pils for missing Charlie 3 but Bob tells me they were never going to turn at Charlie 3 they couldn't take Charlie 3 and they never understood it to be Charlie 3 they were going for Charlie 4 because it was the only taxi way literally the only one they could take so they taxing and then what happens what happened was exactly what they were afraid was going to happen the fog moved in so they're taxing down the runway and is ahead of them and behind them the cloud Bank rolls in and completely encases the panim aircraft wax off IMC they were inside a cloud couldn't see anything so Bob said they just um they just can't to

22:28 a stop because they couldn't see anything he said we were moving like maybe maybe like three knots if that and keep in mind the 747 cockpits three stories up in the air this airport had no Center Line lights um and the controllers had no ay so nobody could see anything and so P essentially came to a stop on the runway and um they were waiting for this for this weather to move out so they could see so now you've got the km crew they get down to the end and they're in the clear right they have to turn around now I would just like to point out having been on the 747 this Runway was 147 feet wide to do

23:15 180 degree turn on a runway in a 747 is Quite a feat I'm guessing that the km Captain had never in his life been asked to do anything like that and I pulled up my old um my flight manual this is actually the manual I had with me uh when I flew the 747 with Bob um but I I took out the old um you know our taxi uh turning radius diagrams here and I don't know if you can see it but the turning radius required to keep the uh gear on the heart surface is 142 feet they had 147 feet so I just wanted to say kudos to the km Captain he had a lot on his plate and he he ended up doing this 180 kept it on the runway and at this point

24:00 he was already on duty I think 11 and a half hours so he was probably pretty tired and he still had to fly to gr Canaria and then fly back to Amsterdam um that day actually he was nine and a half hours I think the panm crew was at 11 and a half hours any case he does the 180 they're in position they're on the runway they see the fog Bank rolling in they clearly don't see PanAm and the first officer calls for his takeoff off clearance now I know there's a lot of information out there that the pilot just took off they didn't get a clearance they were Cavalier blah blah blah that's not true that's not what happened at all uh if you look at the cockpit um CVR the voice recorder the km the first officer called

24:46 the tower and he said km 4805 is now ready for takeoff and we are waiting for our ATC clearance the Tower came back and said KLM 8705 keep in mind kalin's number is 4805 so the the controller didn't seem to really be paying attention not very close attention he didn't even know their flight number he gave him the the um en rout clearance cleared to Papa Beacon climbed to a maintain flight level uh N9 or zero and then right turn after takeoff heading 04 Z it appeared to Bob and to the pan and Pilots that the controller had given the pilots they're in route and their takeoff clearance because called and said they were at the end of the runway and

25:32 they were ready for takeoff it would fall in line with everything else that was being done that was non-standard phraseology so the km Pilots responded back hold on a second here Roger sir cleared to Papa Beacon flight level 9 or Z right turn 040 and he announced we're now taking off the controller came back and he said one word he said okay and that's all he said now if you're Dutch and English is a second language and you hear the word okay what does that mean that means yes affirmative I heard you Roger it doesn't mean no I didn't give you a takeoff clearance it just confirmed what km had

26:19 said to them so now the pan pilotes are taxing down the runway and they hear all this right they can't see anything they're still in the cloud but they hear all this so Bob gets on the radio and he tells me he transmitted he was talking to km when he said this and he said we're still taxing down the runway Clipper 1736 well the tower controller at this point re you know picks up his mic to transmit I guess had some second thoughts or whatever and said stand by for a takeoff I will call you now these two Transmissions were at the exact same time and so they were blocked so nobody heard either one of them but I will just

27:04 make the point that the tower controller saying standby for a takeoff he didn't use a call sign and there were multiple planes on the frequency doing different things so that really wasn't that clear anyhow but perhaps had the Kum crew heard Bob it would have changed everything I we won't know so then the tower responded um actually they didn't respond they were continued talking I don't think they realized that they were blocked and then they said pop Alpha 1736 report when Runway clear well who's Papa Alpha it was Clipper they were always Clipper every single transmission they were Clipper Papa Alpha that's like the name of a taxiway that that didn't that did

27:49 not set off any red flags in the kalm cockpit because there were so many planes in the frequency at this point actually they had started their takeoff role they were committed to taking off and you know you've got your feelers up for your call sign and something that's pertinent but pop Alpha it didn't register and panan came back Bob and he said I don't know it keeps doing that he said okay we'll report clear now Bob messed up here in that he also did not say Clipper in this second transmission all right so now to the panm cockpit so this is this is this is where it gets personal so I'm sitting in the 747 the

28:35 exact same 747 that that Bob was in and I'm sitting in his seat and he starts bringing me through everything that they're thinking while they're sitting on the runway and he's bringing me through like the whole cockpit and everything he was doing and I'm sitting there in his seat and I'm thinking oh my God is kind of hard it was hard to hear it all actually so they're sitting there and he he looks down the runway and they're and they're looking for KLM because they heard km say that they were taking off he looks down the runway and he sees km's lights now the first second that Bob saw him he was like you know Laura that was okay he goes we knew they were there and you know the 47's got

29:21 bright lights and we weren't really sure where we were how close we were to the end and so it didn't really trigger anything immediately but then he looked and he sees the lights are you know doing this what does that mean what does that mean when the lights are bouncing it means that airplane's rolling is what it means and so Bob suddenly realized and and Vic the captain realized everybody realized oh my God oh my God Caleb is rolling Bob starts screaming get off get off get off now Victor at this point now like I said they were at um uh ground idle so uh the engines were completely spooled back Vic the captain he firewalled it he

30:09 put the tiller full in and they had I think 8 and a half seconds before impact and in that time they were able to Pivot the aircraft but they could not get the engine spooled up they could get no forward momentum um it takes I'm trying to think like back it takes like those are old Pratt Whitney engines it would take like a good 12 seconds to really get a response out of those engines and so they were able to Pivot the aircraft um but they were not able to move it out of the way so km uh rolling down the runway they did see uh PanAm uh about about nine seconds before impact and the

30:56 captain tried desperately desperately to get that aircraft off the ground it he had been doing a reduced power takeoff so he he slammed the throttles forward he firewalled it he yanked back and um boy he he came close boy he really came close he he got the aircraft up off the ground he got the nose over PanAm the cockpits cleared each other the nose landing gear cleared each other most of the engines cleared but then the landing gear caught the top of the panim aircraft and and that was it um looking back at the flight data recorder they found at moment of impact uh the Kum

31:43 aircraft was 23 degrees nose up it was in a six degree Left Bank and uh in the investigation they found a 72 foot gouge in the runway Center Line uh from a tail strike he had dragged that tail for 72 feet trying to get the aircraft in the air and they only missed clearing PanAm by 20 feet if they had not put that fuel on that wouldn't have been a problem at all they were just too heavy to clear them and of course obviously if they hadn't put the fuel on they it would have been late to begin with so they impacted them and listening to the um cockpit voice

32:32 recorder the last sound before the before the tapes end in both aircraft on the PanAm aircraft it was the takeoff warning horn because they were at you know full thrust and obviously weren't the takeoff configuration yet and the very last sound with the takeoff warning horn was the incredibly loud piercing sound of the km uh engine uh number one engine passing right over the cockpit and just barely missing it and on the km cockpit voice recorder the very last sound um was the captain's scream right at impact all right so they get hit and Bob is in the cockpit and he he's looking out the window and he sees km coming at them and

33:19 he sees the engine just fill their entire wind screen and as a just as a reflex without even thinking about it he ducked he just ducked you know behind the instrument panel and ends up the captain actually also ducked uh I guess just you know survival Instinct kicks in and when Bob sat back up he heard like a loud scraping noise he heard he felt the thumb he felt the airplane kind of like went up in the air and dropped but it was pretty uneventful it kind of sounded like a bomb went off and it was just quick it was over and he thought oh my God you know we survived like cleared us he really thought that he thought that had cleared them he sits back up and he looks around and he

34:05 realizes that he is alone he's the only one in the cockpit the captain um ends up had falling through the floor of the cockpit through the floor of the first class cabin and was in the cargo bay with a flet ittin who also fell through the floor and in the fire he did survive um the flight engineer was actually still buckled in his seat but his seat had been thrown and flipped and he was hanging upside down in the first class cabin he also was able to get out and survive um Bob looked back and he could see the upper deck was gone and he could see uh all the passengers in their seats and there was no top to the airplane and he was just looking at this and he he

34:52 kind of went into shock he it was just so stunning and again his training kicked in Instinct he he reached up to pull the fire handles because the engines he could see the engines the engines were still spinning and um there was nothing there it was just there was just nothing there and then Bob tells me he was on the ground and it's interesting because he said you know Laura he said I like I just say like I jumped because that's just what's easy to say he said the truth is he goes I I don't know how I got on the ground I don't know I don't know I might have fallen out like the plane was just disintegrating around him so he doesn't know if he fell out or if he jumped he really doesn't know but he did have a broken ankle so maybe he

35:38 jumped he doesn't know but in any case he didn't know he had a broken ankle not for a while so he he hit the ground and he tells me almost joking he goes I just took off running he goes I I don't know where I was going I wasn't thinking he goes I just I hit the ground he goes I just started running I just was running faster than I've ever run on my my life on a broken ankle I had no idea he had a broken ankle and then he he finally stopped and he pulled himself together and he was like what are you doing stop he turned around and when he turned around this is what he saw he saw his airplane it was burning he saw passengers jumping out of the side of the airplane Into the Fire and the

36:24 engines were still spinning and the number two engine was was right there sucking people in so he he suddenly just got his wits about him and he ran back and he ran he said harder even harder than he ever ran in his life he ran back and he just started yanking people out of the fire this is Bob he just was desperately trying to pull people out of the fire trying to get people to not jump in front of the engine trying to tell people walk down the wing and jump don't jump here um there was one opening in the airplane um door I think L2 opened and there was like a big crack in the airplane where people were jumping out of now the passengers on the panan plane for the most part were alive there was so much debris that they

37:10 just couldn't get out of the airplane none of the doors were opened in the fuse Lodge I'll note too also on the km aircraft the autopsy showed that the majority of people were still sitting in their seats with their seat belts fastened uninjured and were burned to death because that airplane came back down on the runway about 1500 ft later right on the center line and um the wings immediately exploded because they were you know had full Fuel and the The Inferno um was so sudden and so severe that they didn't get a single door open on the km aircraft so all the people were stuck inside the fuselodge and they just they just couldn't get out and they couldn't get away from the fire all right so so Bob is searching trying to get

37:57 people um out of the fire and he tells me he's waiting for the fire trucks to come he's waiting for amulance he's waiting for em he's waiting for something and nobody came and he was just like what the hell like where are the fire trucks why is nobody coming and this just went on and on and on quite a long time and um it ends up that the controllers were completely unaware that they were missing 2747s they did not call the fire trucks they did not prush the crash button it wasn't until a pilot and another airplane at the airport called the tower and said you know there's a big fire on the runway and it was then that the controllers called the crash trucks but

38:44 the controllers believed initially that um they heard the explosions they heard two explosions they heard the initial impact then they heard the km crash into the runway they believed that um the terrorists had come to tenar and that it was a terrorist bomb and they actually were discussing evacuating the tower um and then that's when they got you know they um called the fire trucks and they figured out that uh you know maybe it wasn't a terrorist bomb but they never told the fire trucks that there were two airplanes and the airplanes were missing and so the fire trucks when they did arrive the you know um the only way to get into the airport was through the entrance Gates which were all the way down at the End by Runway two where

39:29 both the airplanes had entered the runway to begin with and when the fire trucks arrived and a lot of them arrived and ambulances they got to km which was an airplane that was burning and they stopped there and they didn't go any further because they didn't know there was another airplane involved and so they weren't looking for another airplane it wasn't until some time passed and the fog lifted that they then saw oh down the runway 1500 you know 1500 ft there's a second air what the heck there's a second airplane they were never told there was a second airplane so they went down there and at that point you there's really nothing they could do it was all said and done um Bob ended up going to the hospital in a taxi cab he liked to joke that the cab driver was driving so crazy that he was afraid

40:16 he was going to die on the drive to the hospital after surviving a plane crash all right so that was basically um you know his experience there uh now let's talk about the lessons here me just run through this so this is this is PanAm before and this is panm after all right this was km before and this was km after and these are the passengers after they built um 583 coffins whether they had a body or not and um yeah the Spanish Army came in and uh

41:02 ended up I think they took like a thousand military troops to eventually clear the debris and to do all of this it was a horrific task all right so let's run through our our links here and Lessons Learned and what really caused this accident so we have 583 people dead right so such a such just such a chain of things that went wrong um just such a chaotic mess here one thing after another first of all terrorist bomb nobody was even supposed to be in tene nobody was even supposed to be there to begin with okay and then kin was parked in such a position that PanAm was blocked behind them you know that wasn't planned and then decides to refuel

41:50 okay that caused a delay um which made them too heavy to you know to to clear PanAm and increased obviously their um their you know takeoff distance and uh speed and all that and then of course that delay also caused the fog to move in so then they had the bad weather there was no taxiway signage there was nothing labeled Charlie one Charlie 2 Charlie 3 so everybody was confused as to where they were supposed to get off the Runway centerland lights were out of service so PanAm couldn't see the runway so they couldn't continue taxing um the Transmissions were blocked key transmissions and then when the controller said you know um report clear he didn't say Clipper he said pop Alpha didn't register to anybody the bottom line it was just a

42:35 communication disaster good airplanes good Pilots communication just from beginning to end just sunk these guys all right so now let's talk about what the uh what the uh km crew is doing this is the km cockpit voice quarter so now they turn around they do their 180 they're on the runway right I'm thinking boy this km Captain he's like we're out of here now like we've accomplished everything everything's behind me I think he was a little embarrassed um very long day he was talking about his wife was going to be so worried because a bomb went off in Ted reef and he had no way of getting a

43:21 hold of her to let her know that he wasn't there so you know he was very and he just did this 180 degree turn on the runway which I'm guessing he was patting himself on the back for that and thinking all right I in take off mode now like all this ground stuff is behind me so they call the tower for their um clearance right and this is the thing Bob tells me that he believed that had gotten a takeoff Clarance and he believed that it was just very confusing and it was very reasonable for the crew to think they were clear for takeoff but then he was part of the investigation and during the investigation he got to listen to the

44:08 cockpit voice recorders and he said that when he listened to the km cockpit voice recorder he was sickened by it and he was sickened by it because there was new information that came out so listening to the cockit voice recorder after they started their takeoff role the Kum flight engineer and let me remind you this was a professional flight engineer started his own found you know organization highly respected more hours than the captain and the first officer he said to the captain he and to the first officer he was sitting in the center so he said to both of them he asked the question well is he not clear

44:54 then and the first officer and the captain answered him at the exact same time they actually blocked each other the first officer said yeah yes and the km Captain said what did you say because he didn't he didn't hear him and the Kum flight engineer asked again is he not clear that Pan-American and the kaleem captain said oh yeah yeah yeah he's clear he just he said the same thing the first officer said and then what 12 seconds later you heard the captain scream and that was the end of the cockpit voice recorder so the flight engineer it's not like he shook him on the shoulder and said

45:39 hey you know pan I'm still on the runway but he questioned it he brought it to the captain's attention but the captain and the first officer equally both of them were absolutely convinced that they had to take off clearance and they absolutely were convinced that panon was off the Runway and I say this because the captain wasn't suicidal he didn't want to die and he wasn't a mass murderer he didn't want to kill 20 583 people he believed that they had been cleared for takeoff why did he believe that so that's that's where the big lesson is here that's like that's the big takeaways let's figure this out so for the first time ever NASA came in and

46:27 they did what was called a human factors um study now again this was back before the term human factors was coined and it was a very New Concept but they were trying to figure out how it was that these very experienced Pilots could have been so mistaken why do they think panan was off the Runway why do they think they had to take off clearance how do these mistakes happen and there was a lot of reasons but studying the k M Captain who's super experienced senior guy and honestly like if you talk to anybody that trained under him or that knew him he had a very good reputation for being easy you know laid-back friendly a good instructor um

47:12 he wasn't the Tyrant um but he definitely was mistaken here and so they figured out in this human factor study there are a few things going on here one on the pressure he was under the the criminalization he had to go if he didn't go you know there was going to be huge ramifications he was worried about his wife but there was also what they call training syndrome and anyone who's an airline pilot knows what that is it's when you're at the training center nothing's realistic right you don't have a trffic controllers there's never anybody on the runway you have four hours to get all your Maneuvers in and you're just like checking them off getting through of them and then you know once you accomplish one one thing you know you hit the magic button you

47:57 reset you get to do it again or whatever is the next you know maneuver is that you have to do and this Captain had been in the training center I think for six years and he had not actually been in an airplane for 12 weeks that is a long time that is months without any Realistic Flying and so he was not you know really current when it comes to and you know picturing traffic um communication problems um other airplanes being in your way because none of that existed in his world and so it just wasn't in his perview and they also found that he had what was called expectation bias which is just what it sounds like it means he

48:44 called for takeoff clearance he assumed that what he got was a takeoff clearance the controller to say that it was not of course you know dead men tell no lies so the controllers can you know you can have whatever version you want because they are not able to ask the km crew what they were thinking or what they you know what they perceived or what they were asking but the expectation was that they called for takeoff clearance they were given one whether they were or not that's what they thought they heard that's what they were expecting obviously panan wouldn't be on the runway if they were given a takeoff clearance so they were expecting that the runway was clear and so you know for those reasons and then of course you have the um the whole language barrier and I found like I've flown to lots of

49:31 lots and lots of foreign countries and um controllers are amazing everybody speaks English all around the world this was back in 1977 I think the rules were not nearly as specific um you know as they are today now that language is not a problem but at the time they really didn't have a whole lot of roles as far as um you know speaking English and I found you know when I'm at like foreign airports sometimes you kind of like um comply instead of clarify because it's so confusing you just sort of do what you were told to do rather than question it or ask for something else and you know that could have been going that could have been going on here I know Bob told me in the PanAm cockpit that was definitely happening to

50:16 them they were just trying to comply because there was no conversation to be had so this happen so what um how do we benefit from this because God knows we have to get something positive out of this tragedy right so NASA did this study and um actually nothing came of it nothing came of it and then one year later United Airlines crashed a dc8 into Portland Oregon and um I won't get all the details of that crash it's a whole another presentation but the bottom line is the dc8 just like the 747 you know all those aircraft at that time the flight engineer is the only one that had any information regarding fuel so no one

51:03 knew how much fuel was on the airplane other than the flight engineer and then flying Pilots if they were told by the flight engineer or you know if they asked so they were coming into land in Portland they had a gear problem they actually did have a gear problem they went out to hold they were still on the landing configuration so they were burning through a lot more fuel than they realized which was a mistake the captain was very focused on on trouble shooting the gear problem and they flew until they ran out of fuel so now United Airlines got really upset about this because they had a very experienced crew crashed a perfectly good airplane you know no reason this plane went down and killed a bunch of people and so United got very serious and they they they did a lot of research on their own and they found that the only reason why this

51:50 airplane crashed was because there was a communication disaster in that cockpit they just weren't talking to each other the flight engineer knew how much fuel there was he kind of hinted a little bit but he didn't just say hey Captain we don't have fuel that communication just didn't happen and so United decided we need to nip this in the bud and they started a program a Brand New Concept it was actually um a revolution in thinking when it comes to Flight Training um it's what we now call CRM at the time they called it I remember because this is what was called when I went through the training um CLR which was cockpit leadership resources it had it's had a few names over the years but now they've settled on CRM cockpit resource management and basically what that means

52:36 is that you have lots and lots of um qualified Professionals in that cockpit and in the cabin and you're going to use all your resources and it makes life a lot easier for the captain you know you have a little bit less pressure on you um because now you're a team and everybody's working together and um there's no more of this like hierarchy which I think that whole like hierarchy environment where the captain knows everything and everybody just subserving to him I think that just kind of came over from the military and the airlines just decided you know what that is just not working for us so they started this program and um now in training we all go through CRM training and by the way CRM training is not so bad for marriages either relationships just saying the

53:23 philosophy behind it pretty good for life and then the serum that eventually developed into aqp which is our um Advanced qualifications program which also stemming from tenor Reef in these accidents basically a nutshell that means that Pilots when they're in training once they have established that they can fly an airplane they're working for an airline now they're going to have to start practicing things that are going to kill them that have killed other people and basically they just start getting the do over that other pilots who had made made mistakes probably wish they could have gotten and so we practice you know incidents and accidents in our flight training through the aqp program so that we're ready for real you know real life situations that other Pilots have faced um and then when

54:10 it's our turn we've already seen it and practiced it and those Maneuvers are continually changing all right and to prove that CRM and aqp work um a few years later after that a um United 232 with Al Hayes think was a a dc10 going into s City lost all their Hydraulics and none of the three pilotes up front knew what to do and it ends up there was a Check Airman for the dct1 sitting in the back in the cabin and the captain brought him up and this Check Airman kind of took over and figured out that he took the flat engineer seat moved him and he figured out that he could maneuver the aircraft just using the throttles and the cap didn't let him let him do it welcomed it they work

54:55 together as a team and they saved a lot of lives and so CRM um has really changed the way that cockpits are managed and for for the better and so is aqp all right so that's that's it for my presentation um I am I did write this book jet boss and you know basically if you just want to know like what pilots are really thinking and feeling and doing inside that cockpit that's what this is about it's just sort of like the human aspect of it and it's also just like an encouraging push because lots of people start off in life someplace that's not anywhere near where they want to be and um not everybody wants to follow you know following the footsteps of their parents and you know if I could do it God

55:42 anybody can do it and so that kind of brings you through that it's just an encouraging push and that's it I have a YouTube channel now I'm starting to do some part 121 airport uh airplane uh incidents and accident analysis and uh I have a website and I'll just say on the last tab the UK can fly tab I've got links to I think over $6 million in aviation scholarships if you know anybody who wants to flight train and they don't have the money there is money out there so you just have to find all these all these you know people that are giving away free money one question why do you think the km Captain has been portrayed so poorly in numerous documentaries and accounts of this accident I recall one documentary depicting the km Captain is being fed up

56:29 with the controllers and deciding to take off without a clearance admittedly unbelievable right so there's two reasons for that um One is because the Spanish authorities their equivalent of the ntsp they had complete control authoritarian control over the report and that's the information that they put out they never mentioned the soccer game going on the entire time in the background they never me mentioned any of the mistakes that the controllers made um they actually made the controllers out to be heroes and they they blamed the PanAm Pilots for missing their turn and they blame the km Captain for taking off without a clearance so a big part of it is simply that the P the politically the people behind the report did not put out an accurate report and

57:16 then the second reason is boy what a great story that is right oh the km Captain killed 583 people because he was an I mean that's really what it comes down to the media just picked up on that it was a fantastic story better than a movie and that's just the story that like you know it's like um you know just like folklore and and it's never really been cleared up thank you all for joining us this evening have a good night