March 27, 2024. Tenerife Remembered.
Just a reminder, morbid as it might be, that today marks the 47th anniversary of the deadliest aviation disaster of all time.
On March 27th, 1977, on the Spanish island of Tenerife, two Boeing 747s collided on a foggy runway, killing 583 people. There’s a surreal, almost mythical aura that surrounds the accident, due in no small part to the almost unbelievable cascade of ironies and coincidences that led to it — beginning with the fact that neither plane was supposed to be at Tenerife in the first place.
I was only ten years old, but I clearly remember the day it happened, watching the news in our downstairs living room — the choppy, black-and-white footage from a place I’d never heard of.
