You topped off in fog - and lost the minutes that could have saved 583
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You topped off in fog - and lost the minutes that could have saved 583
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You topped off in fog - and lost the minutes that could have saved 583
In this episode, we follow the decisions, conditions and people on the afternoon of March 27, 1977 at Los Rodeos airport. The story traces how routine choices, time pressure and limited infrastructure shaped a chain of events-what would you have done faced with the same constraints?
Date: March 27, 1977
Location: Los Rodeos (Tenerife North) Airport
Event: Bomb at Gran Canaria redirects traffic to Los Rodeos
Person: Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten (KLM captain, chief flight instructor)
Aircraft: Boeing 747 (KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736)
- A bomb at Gran Canaria at 13:15 forced inbound flights to divert to Los Rodeos, creating an unexpected surge of wide-body jets.
- Los Rodeos sat 633 meters above sea level with a coastal cloud layer at ground level, reducing runway visibility to under 100 meters.
- The airport lacked ground radar and had a taxiway too narrow for 747 wingspans, forcing large jets to use the runway to taxi.
- Captain van Zanten chose to refuel fully at Los Rodeos, a 35-minute process that increased takeoff weight and narrowed legal crew duty-time margins.
- Multiple experienced flight crews, including van Zanten (11,700+ hours) and Pan Am’s Victor Grubbs (21,043 hours), operated simultaneously on the runway in dense fog.
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