On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747 aircraft, KLM 4805 and Pan Am 1738, collided on the runway at Los Rodeos Airport on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands.  Between the two aircraft, 583 people lost their lives.  There were 61 survivors.

It seems inconceivable that two of the largest passenger airliners could end up heading towards each other on the same runway.  What circumstances led them to be on the same runway?  How could they not see each other?  Were controllers in the airport’s tower not paying attention?  Who was responsible?  Could this happen again?

Explore this web site and learn what happened that Sunday afternoon.  The links at the top of each page will guide you through a summary of the incident describing what happened as it happened, an official report detailing the facts and what investigators discovered following the collision, and this groups analysis of the disaster in regards to system accidents.

On the Multimedia page, you will find a collection of all the images shown throughout this site.  From the Further Reading page you can browse to other web sites about the Tenerife Disaster.