A KLM Boeing 747, flight 4805 taxied to\u00c2\u00a0the only\u00c2\u00a0runway at Los Rodeos airport and\u00c2\u00a0took position\u00c2\u00a0for takeoff. The weather was terrible, they could only see part of the runway. They also knew that there was another plane taxiing on that runway when they lined up for takeoff, but couldn’t see it. Probably due to language differences, the communication with the tower was not clear. There was some confusion between the captain and the first officer, but the captain decided the runway was clear and started the takeoff. After all, he had heard the tower order the other plane to take the nearest exit off of the runway … plus he was in a hurry. If he waited a bit longer, Dutch regulations would have required a change of crew: they would have been on duty for too long. That would mean hours, if not a day, delay. So he pushed for it.<\/p>\n

All this\u00c2\u00a0happened on March 27, 1977 on the Canary Island of Tenerife. The other plane on the runway, which, coincidently, missed the exit they were supposed to take to clear the runway, was Pan Am flight 1736.<\/p>\n

583 People died that day in the resulting collision of the two planes.<\/p>\n

There were a few different incidents that led up to this accident, but the main one was, what is now called in the aviation world, “getthereitis” (get-there-itis .. get it? It simply means: being in such a hurry to get somewhere, that safety regulations are ignored: just GET there, no matter what.)<\/p>\n

Guess which word went through my head when I read this today on CNN:<\/p>\n

\n

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida<\/strong> (AP) — Caught in a scheduling squeeze, NASA decided to try to launch space shuttle Atlantis on Friday without replacing a troublesome electrical component.<\/p>\n

Friday is the last launch day available before the U.S. space agency runs into a scheduling conflict with the Russian space agency.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, NASA decided not to change out an electricity-generating fuel cell whose coolant pump had given erratic readings, causing a scrub a day earlier. Replacing the fuel cell could have delayed any launch attempt by several weeks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m glad I’m not an astronaut: I mean, can you imagine being in<\/strong> that thing, while NASA is going to try<\/strong> to launch the damned thing with known faulty parts (and we’re not talking about a broken light over its license plate here!)?<\/p>\n

See this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A KLM Boeing 747, flight 4805 taxied to\u00c2\u00a0the only\u00c2\u00a0runway at Los Rodeos airport and\u00c2\u00a0took position\u00c2\u00a0for takeoff. The weather was terrible, they could only see part of the runway. They also knew that there was another plane taxiing on that runway when they lined up for takeoff, but couldn’t see it. Probably due to language differences, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}