REENO Aviation Flying Club

Happy New Year! May 2024 bring you lots of health, happiness and good fortune!

Watching the news today and seeing a Japanese airliner engulfed in flames reminded me of an aviation disaster story that I have been wanting to emphasize to you for a while. Thankfully, today the death toll of this ground collision was limited to the souls on board of the coast guard plane. This loss of life is tragic. It should be a reminder that the deadliest accidents in aviation history happen on the ground.

I was young, I was 6 when the accident happened. My story starts when I was 8, I was at my aunts birthday party in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Whispers around me I recall vividly, although I am sure some details have faded over the years. One of the guests had two little kids with him. “So sad for these little girls”, I heard, “their mom was a flight attendant with KLM”. She was killed in the “Tenerife” accident. And although I didn’t understand the exact circumstances at the time, I know that there was a lot of trepidation and some shame associated with this accident. Our national pride, the KLM airline with its royal blue styled crown on the tail, had been involved in the worst airline disaster to date. KLM had and still has a phenomenal reputation for professionalism and emphasis on safety. Their crew of tall blond and blue eyed pilots and flight attendants in striking uniforms probably sold the ‘Dutch’ brand better than any other company around the world. They made what I believe is the very best advertisements in aviation ever made. I include a compilation of a decade of these commercials here (ask me to translate the Dutch later!)

On March 27, 1977 a KLM Boeing 747 hurled down the runway on a fogged out day. Two thirds down the runway it tried to pull off the plane to get over the crossing PanAm Boeing 747. It got into the air, but couldn’t fly or avoid the PanAm plane. 61 people on the PanAm flight and none of the KLM occupants survived in what is to date still the deadliest crash in aviation history. 583 people lost their lives.

Many documentaries have been made over the decades. I urge you to find one and watch it. I can’t do the whole review justice here. Although a sad set of circumstances formed the prelude to all this, a terrorist bombing at the final destination for both planes had forced a diversion to this small island airport, the communication at this now overwhelmed airport that day broke down very significantly. The fog and lack of situational awareness, an overwhelmed ATC tower not used to dealing with large airliners, and non-existence of modern crew concepts formed the perfect disaster soup, served with a healthy dose of Gruyère Swiss Cheese. In the end it was the fatal decision of the KLM captain to push the throttles forward that was deemed the proximal cause of the disaster.

You may have heard me correct your call outs at the hold short line of towered and non-towered airports. Just this week I saw a plane roll onto the runway without making any calls on CTAF. 2023 was also the year of the near miss on the runway, with well documented ‘squeeze plays’ gone almost horribly wrong only saved by last second go-arounds. The straw that broke the camel’s back was a call heard at INT where a jet pilot replied to the tower’s take off clearance call with a short ‘rolling’ call.

The words ‘Take Off’ should be on the very short list of absolutely holy words in aviation. Others may be ‘Hold Short’ and ‘Mayday, Mayday’. These words can and should only be spoken and used under very specific circumstances and never used otherwise. If misinterpreted by you, ATC or another airplane in the area, a Tenerife-like disaster may happen. We almost had a repeat this year:

Edit: Link to Aviation-Safety.net accident report

The only time you should hear the words ‘Take Off’ is when tower gives the ‘N357ES fly runway heading Cleared for TAKE OFF, runway 33’ and when the pilot reads back ‘runway heading, cleared for TAKE OFF, runway 33’. That’s it. You do not use these words anywhere or anytime otherwise. Coming up on the hold short line, in prop planes, you are expected to let the tower know you are ready. Don’t use ‘take off’. This could be misunderstood by tower, you or someone else on the field to be a clearance. Use ‘N357ES READY at 33’. In a jet or turbine aircraft you are not supposed to even make a ready call. You are presumed to be on tower frequency, and ready to go. For the sake of flow you can make a ready call, but it is not needed. In a prop plane you are expected to do a run-up, which requires you to let tower know you are ready.

On non-towered airports there is -wait for it- no tower. You can’t get a take off clearance, and you therefore can’t use the holy words. The rules are less obvious here, but I urge you to use the phraseology that is in the AIM and make a call ‘Davidson County Traffic, N357ES departing runway 6, Davidson County’ that does not use the holy words. That way you honor the principle that ‘Take Off’ holds a very special place in our aviation language.

As with almost all rules in aviation, the price that was paid to arrive at these rules was very high. The chilling effect of seeing the photo’s of the mother of the two kids at my aunts birthday party all those years ago is still etched in my brain. It was a very traumatic experience. It wasn’t because of my remembering the accident, or seeing a ball of fire on the news like today. It was the palpable grief and sorrow, combined with the whispers in the birthday crowd and seeing these two little kids now without a mother, while seeing a picture of a beautiful lady in her KLM flight attendant outfit that burnt this into my mind. I hope that you will treat these radio calls with the sincerity that they deserve. There is no place for error.