The crash of two airliners, KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, both 747s, on the island of Tenerife in 1979 has gone down as the deadliest airline catastrophe of all time, with nearly 600 fatalities.  Today’s podcast goes into the crash of the two planes, and the eight different pieces of information that, when linked together, caused the crash.

As always, you can download the podcast by clicking on this link, find it in iTunes, or listen to it below.

Sources for the podcast:

• The Tenerife Disaster article at Wikipedia
• The final Dutch report on the accident at Tenerife
• The AirDisaster.com entry for KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am flight 1736
• A BBC “On This Day” report
• The NOVA special, “The Deadliest Plane Crash“

As promised, here’s a diagram of the airport at Los Rodeos.

And finally, the NOVA special on this is one of the best out there.  I’m going to try and embed it here, but if it doesn’t work, click on the link above.

Watch The Deadliest Plane Crash on PBS. See more from NOVA.