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Exemplification Essay: The Aviation Disaster Of 1977

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The aviation disaster of 1977 was undoubtedly a traumatic experience that highlighted the dangers of aviation to many. Tenerife’s air traffic controller, Pan Am, and KLM’s suffered through several small errors that led up to this disaster that headed to the loss of many lives. In this essay, the miscommunications coupled with the uncontrollable weather plays a role in explaining the disaster and how it was handled. In specific terms, David Grayson rationalizes that this catastrophe had several small errors and even unknown quirks that made the incident more so disastrous than it could have been. Consequently, the disaster of 1977 could be viewed as a worst case scenario because of it’s unknown quirks, small errors that could have been fixed …show more content…

David Grayson may have missed out to point an additional factor in such a disaster: The fog and the lack of a working centerline. In the audio log of the last minutes of both flights, the air traffic controller mentions to both pilots that the centerline is out of service. Centerline services often have a color coded message which is especially utilized when there’s a foggy atmosphere present. The centerline services that were not available in addition to the layer of fog add more complexity into this incident, only making the whole event a couple of steps away of an extremely disastrous accident. According to SKYbrary, an electronic source of flight safety and aviation management, flights operating on a low visibility operation require lights in their taxiing, takeoff, and landing. Grayson mentions in Underwood’s book that the fog in Tenerife is not unusual for the Island, insinuating that the fog is a weather factor that could have been handled with ease. So, in terms of fog and technical issues, the Tenerife airport have bypassed such a mishandling of a key service that is a default code of conduct by simply needing the acknowledgement of the pilots and not further inquiring about the extra safety

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