A little over 45 years ago there was a major aviation disaster over Tenerife as a plane carrying 146 people slammed into a mountain and crashed, resulting in the deaths of all on board.
The plane that crashed was a Boeing 727 that belonged to the now defunct airline Dan-Air and was known as Flight 1008.
It took off from Manchester on the morning of 25 April and was headed to Tenerife with over a hundred holidaymakers looking for some springtime sunshine.
The flight continued without incident until it was time for the plane to begin descending as another aircraft was heading for the same runway.
In order to avoid a mid-air collision, Flight 1008 was ordered to enter a holding pattern.
Flight 1008 crashed on 25 April, 1980, resulting in the deaths of all on board (By clipperarctic – G-BDAN, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28486073)
Just three years earlier, the skies above the Tenerife airport had been the site of the worst ever air crash in history as two planes had collided in mid-air and resulted in 583 deaths.
In that case, a communication error had led one of the planes to think it had been given clearance for take-off when there was another aircraft still taxiing off the runway.
A communication error had proved fatal before, and it would contribute to yet another disaster now as air-traffic controller Justo Camin had to improvise with a holding pattern for Flight 1008, since the runway they were approaching didn’t have one.
Camin said: “Roger, the standard holding pattern overhead Foxtrot Papa is inbound heading one five zero, turn to the left, call you back shortly.”
However, the controller had meant to say ‘turns to the left’ to indicate that the direction the plane should go while in a holding pattern instead of ‘turn’.
As such, the plane only made one turn to the left which sent them towards a mountainous part of Tenerife.
The wreckage was found soon after the crash, and it was clear nobody had survived (Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives)
In the cockpit of Flight 1008 was pilot Arthur John Whelan, co-pilot Michael John Firth and engineer Raymond John Carey, and flight recordings revealed they started to discuss the strangeness of the situation.
One of the men in the cockpit said (via The Mirror): “Bloody strange hold, isn’t it? It doesn’t parallel with the runway or anything.”
The flight was given instructions to descend further ahead of landing, with the controller thinking they were over the sea instead of near mountains, with the pilot saying: “I don’t like that.”
“They want us to keep going more round, don’t they?” co-pilot Firth said, and just then the plane’s ground alarms blared to warn them to pull up.
The pilot tried to turn the plane the opposite way rather than pulling up, and the engineer Carey said ‘let’s get out of here’ as the plane lost height as it span around to the right.
“Bank angle, bank angle,” from Carey were the final recorded words from the cockpit before the crash, with Flight 1008 crashing into Mount La Esperanza and killing all 146 people on board.
