Los Rodeos Airport Case Study

The disastrous collision between two boeing747's on March 27, 1977 at Los rodeos airport, one of the canary islands. The crash brought an end to 547 lives including the cabin crew. An unexpected bombing at the gran canaria airport had caused many aircrafts to be diverted to Los rodeos airport; the klm flight and the pan am flight being amongst them. They are the two aircrafts involved in the accident. Due to a lot of congestion, the air traffic controllers were obliged to station many of aircrafts on the runway, thereby obliterating it. The situation has worsened even more when a thick dense fog had developed around tenerife, immensely reducing the visibility.
When the grand canaria had reopened, the parked aircrafts blocking the taxi way required both the aircrafts to taxi on the same run way in order to take off. However due to reduced visibility the aircrafts were oblivious to each others presence and the air traffic controller had no sight of the positions of the plane. Since there were no ground radar, the only way to determine the position of the planes was by talking

They believed that it was a mature misunderstanding between the two flights. They pointed out that the air traffic controllers were distracted in other means of entertainment and we're out of focus. They also mentioned that pan am airlines had not followed the instructions either making the accident even more obvious.
Eventually the airline took the responsibility for the accident and provided a compensation for the victims or their families ranging between $58,000 to $600000. There was was a total of $110 million settlements for property and damage due to the rules imposed by the European convention that time.
Surprisingly this was the first investigation in which the human factors for the accident was studied. Some of the human factors included