Page 37 - Fire Services Journal 2018

"AN INCREASED EMPHASIS WAS
PLACED ON USING STANDARDISED PHRASEOLOGY IN ATC COMMUNICATION BY BOTH CONTROLLERS AND PILOTS ALIKE, THEREBY REDUCING THE CHANCE FOR IS UNDERSTANDINGS. AS PART OF THESE CHANGES, THE WORD "TAKEOFF" WAS REMOVED FROM GENERAL USAGE, AND
IS ONLY SPOKEN BY ATC WHEN ACTUALLY CLEARING AN AIRCRAFT TO TAKE OFF."
the KLM wreck some distance away in the thick fog. Eventually, most of the survivors on the wings dropped to the ground below.
Captain Veldhuyzen van Zanten was KLM’s chief of flight training. His photograph was used for publicity materials such as magazine advertisements, including the inflight magazine on board PH-BUF. As such, KLM attempted to contact him to give public statements regarding the disaster, before learning that he was the captain involved. He had given the co-pilot on the ill-fated flight his Boeing 747 qualification check about two months before the accident.
Aftermath
The accident had a lasting influence on the industry, particularly in the area of communication. An increased emphasis was placed on using standardised phraseology in ATC communication by both controllers and pilots alike, thereby reducing the chance for misunderstandings. As part of these changes, the word “takeoff” was removed from general usage, and is only spoken by ATC when actually clearing an aircraft to take off. Less experienced flight crew members were encouraged to challenge their captains when they believed something was not correct, and captains were instructed to listen to their crew and evaluate all decisions in light of crew concerns. This concept would later be expanded into what is known today as Crew Resource Management. CRM training is now mandatory for all airline pilots.
Despite the various factors feeding into the disaster, the official inquiry laid the entire blame on van Zanten, the experienced KLM pilot. The veteran pilot’s most egregious sin, caused either by impatience or miscommunication, was to take off without having received clearance from the tower. Had van Zanten waited, the worst aviation accident in history would never have happened.
HISTORY
The KLM plane remained briefly airborne following the collision, but the impact with the Pan Am had sheared off the #1 (outer left) engine, and the #2 (inner left) engine had ingested significant amounts of shredded materials from the Pan Am. The KLM pilot quickly lost control, and the 747 went into a stall, rolled sharply, and hit the ground at a point 150m (500 ft) past the collision, sliding a further 300m (1,000ft) down the runway. The full load of fuel, which had caused the earlier delay, ignited immediately.
A survivor of the Pan Am flight, John Coombs of Haleiwa, Hawaii, said that sitting in the nose of the plane probably saved his life: “We all settled back, and the next thing an explosion took place and the whole port side, left side of the plane, was just torn wide open.” Both airplanes were destroyed. All 234 passengers and 14 crew members in the KLM plane died, while 326 passengers and 9 crew members aboard the Pan Am flight were killed, primarily due to the fire and explosions resulting from the fuel spilled and ignited in the impact. The other
56 passengers and 5 crew members aboard the Pan Am aircraft survived, including the pilots and flight engineer. Most of the survivors on the Pan Am aircraft walked out onto the left wing, the side away from the collision, through holes in the fuselage structure.
The Pan Am’s engines were still running at takeoff power for a few minutes after the accident despite First Officer Bragg’s intention to turn them off. The top part of the cockpit, where the engine switches were located, had been destroyed in the collision, and all control lines were severed, leaving no method for the flight crew to control the aircraft’s systems. After a short time running at full power, the Pan-Am’s engines began to disintegrate, throwing engine parts at high speed that killed a flight attendant who had escaped the burning plane.
Survivors waited for rescue, but it did not come promptly, as the firefighters were initially unaware that there were two aircraft involved and were concentrating on
SCENES OF DEVASTATION IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE CRASH
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