Did anyone survive the Pan Am crash?

At Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport, a KLM Boeing 747 initiated takeoff without air traffic control clearance and smashed into a Pan Am 747 waiting on the runway, resulting in 583 fatalities. No one aboard the KLM aircraft survived, and only 71 people escaped from the Pan Am wreckage.



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There were initially 70 survivors, but 9 passengers later died of their injuries. Among the survivors were the captain, first officer and flight engineer. Most of the survivors on the Pan Am walked out onto the intact left wing, the side away from the collision, through holes in the fuselage structure.

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The collision occurred when KLM Flight 4805 initiated its takeoff run during dense fog while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway. The impact and resulting fire killed everyone on board KLM 4805 and most of the occupants of Pan Am 1736, with only 61 survivors in the front section of the aircraft.

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#1: The Tenerife Airport Disaster The deadliest aviation accident in history actually occurred while on the ground, not in the air. In 1977, two fully loaded Boeing 747 passenger jets collided in the middle of a runway on Tenerife Island, killing 583 people.

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Tenerife airline disaster, runway collision of two Boeing 747 passenger airplanes in the Canary Islands on March 27, 1977. The disaster killed more than 580 people. Both planes involved in the crash had been scheduled to depart from Las Palmas on the island of Gran Canaria.

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Founded in 1927, the airline would be 91 had it survived to the present day. Instead, it ceased operations in 1991 at 64 years old, due to bankruptcy. The Pan Am name lives on, however, and has now been adopted by a private rail transport company.

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Crew that survived. Capt. Victor Grubbs (now deceased) , Co-Pilot Robert Bragg (now deceased) and Flight Engineer George Warns (now deceased), Jump Seat Observers John Cooper and Juan Antonio Murillo Rivas, Purser Dorothy Kelly, F/A Carla Johnson, Joan Jackson, Suzanne Donovan.

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Of these 24 million hours, 6.84 of every 100,000 flight hours yielded an airplane crash, and 1.19 of every 100,000 yielded a fatal crash. This is down from an all-time high of 9.08 accidents per 100,000 hours in 1994.

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Running since 1929, Hawaiian is among the oldest airlines in the world but, remarkably, it has never suffered a single fatal crash or hull loss.

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Singapore Airlines is universally lauded for its high-quality service and efficient operations, and also enjoys a reputation as one of the world's safest airlines since it has been accident-free since 2000. Review: read here my review of Singapore Airlines' new First Class in an Airbus A380.

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There has not been a fatal crash involving a major U.S. airline since February 2009, when a Continental flight crashed into a house near Buffalo, killing all 49 people on board.

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