All incidents

1977-03-27 · Los Rodeos Airport, Tenerife

Tenerife Airport Disaster

Two Boeing 747s, KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, collided on the runway at Tenerife in dense fog. The accident killed 583 people and remains the deadliest aviation accident.

deadliestrunwayboeing-747air-traffic-control

Risk rails

Values versus the incident class median

These rails are editorial risk dimensions, not final accident-cause percentages. Pending rows stay visibly blank.

Weather

81/100

Human factors

94/100

Mechanical

3/100

Terrain

8/100

Ops control

91/100

Safety lesson

This page should make the operational chain legible: diversion pressure, congestion, fog, radio ambiguity, runway occupancy, and crew authority gradients.

Insurance signal

Useful for airport liability, runway incursion risk, mass-fatality accumulation, and historical severity benchmarking.

Median context

Historical severity

Deadliest aviation accident

The benchmark event for runway collision safety lessons.

Training value

Extreme

Still used to explain CRM, phraseology, fog operations, and runway occupancy discipline.

Source status

Official report available

A final accident report is available through FAA-hosted archival material.