A woman who survived the deadliest aircraft disaster in history, which claimed 583 lives, has shared her harrowing experience.
On March 27, 1977, aviation history was forever altered when two planes collided on the runway at Tenerife’s Los Rodeos Airport (now Tenerife North), resulting in the deaths of 583 out of the 644 people aboard both aircraft.
After a terrorist attack at Gran Canaria Airport, flights bound for the island were diverted to the much smaller Los Rodeos Airport, which quickly became overwhelmed.
This diversion, coupled with poor weather and miscommunication between air traffic control and the pilots of KLM Flight 4805, led to disaster. The KLM flight attempted to take off, colliding with Pan Am Flight 1736, which was taxiing on the runway.
The collision resulted in the deaths of all 248 people on board the KLM flight, while only 61 of the 396 passengers and crew on the Pan Am flight survived. This tragic event remains the deadliest air disaster in aviation history, with a total death toll of 583.
Among the fortunate survivors from the Pan Am flight was Joani Feathers, who was traveling to the Canary Islands for a Mediterranean cruise with her boyfriend at the time.
Feathers recounted feeling anxious about the proximity of the KLM plane that afternoon. In an interview with The Daytona Beach Journal, she shared how she expressed her concerns to her boyfriend, Jack Ridout. His response turned out to be a chilling omen of the disaster that was about to unfold.
Don’t worry. If he hits us, you won’t feel a thing,” he told her.
After turning down an invitation to join others for a drink in the upstairs lounge, Joani buckled her seatbelt and waited for the KLM flight to clear the runway. Moments later, the cabin was shattered by the KLM plane’s collision, with the upstairs lounge, where she had been invited, completely destroyed.
Joani and her boyfriend, Jack, were injured but alive, and they now faced the terrifying challenge of escaping the wreckage. The scene was horrific; Joani remembered seeing one woman “cut in half” by her seatbelt and another woman, still wearing curlers in her hair, engulfed in flames.
Drawing on her law enforcement training, Joani and her boyfriend, Jack, quickly moved to escape the wrecked airliner. Joani managed to get off the plane and ran as far as she could, while Jack stayed behind to help a flight attendant deploy an escape raft. Tragically, he had to flee when a subsequent explosion decapitated the woman.
Joani recalled seeing the plane explode like an “atom bomb” before she and Jack were taken to the hospital, where she was able to contact her mother.
Although Joani has flown many times since the crash, the disaster is never far from her thoughts. “It’s always on my mind when I get on a plane,” she confessed.