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About the Tenerife disaster: - it was over 40 years ago (1977). - it occured in exceptional circumstances (the Tenerife airport was overloaded because Gran Ca
by rob74 5y ago
About the Tenerife disaster:
- it was over 40 years ago (1977).
- it occured in exceptional circumstances (the Tenerife airport was overloaded because Gran Canaria airport was closed due to a terrorist incident).
- having a tower didn't help a lot because of thick fog. They didn't have ground radar either, but that probably wasn't unusual for a "provincial" airport in 1977.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoAnd Tenerife resulted in improved processes and regulations like verbal confirmation of takeoff approval (aircraft now state intent to 'departure' and the word takeoff is only used by the tower when giving the permission)
- maxcan 5y agoActually aircraft do use the term “cleared for takeoff” when reading back their takeoff clearance to ATC. Little bit of trivia, but on Sully’s famous flight he didn’t quite read back his takeoff correctly. You need to state your identifier AND runway and, IIRC, he only read back “cactus 1549 cleared for takeoff”, omitting the runway. Totally unrelated to the flight, just a little detail which the movie got right (I checked the liveATC audio).
- GekkePrutser 5y agoOh yes sorry, I just meant that aircraft don't use the term takeoff anymore until it's been granted by ATC. A major cause of Tenerife was that the KLM captain was under the impression that clearance had been granted and the Pan-Am had left the active runway. And that his fellow crew who had been listening were afraid to speak up. A lot of improvements have resulted from that terrible accident. We reviewed it in flight class, they were always using accidents to explain why rules are so important.