Tenerife Airport Disaster

[Jim Eshelman]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
March 27, 1977, Tenerife, Canary Islands (28N28'54'', 16W20'18'')
EDIT: Time given below: 17:06:50 (5:06:50 PM).

Deadliest accident in aviation history: Two Boeing 747s collided killing 583 people. KLM Flight 4805 & Pan Am Flight 1736. Numerous causative factors included an unusual amount of traffic at the airport, requiring parking of planes on runways; heavy fog; and pilot errors. KLM 4805 attempted take-off on a runway where Pan Am 1736 was still parked, and couldn't see it in the fog. They collided, destroying both planes in an explosive fuel-fed fireball, killing everyone on KLM 4805 and all but 61 people on the Pan Am.

An earlier incident at 1:15 PM had resulted in the excessive traffic redirected to the airport. This one occurred at 5:06:50 PM, just as Mars set.

It's a rather poor series of charts, at least to the shortest term ones.

Year: Capsolar (Dormant.)
Moon-Jupiter op. (1°15' in mundo)

Year: Cansolar
Jupiter on IC (1°30')
Saturn on Dsc (2°59')
Venus on Dsc (4°30')
-- Venus-Saturn conj. (1°31' in mundo)
Mercury on Dsc (9°34')

Bridge
CapQ Moon-Jupiter op. 2/15-4/7
t. Saturn op Cansolar Asc 3/2-5/20
t. Uranus sq. Cansolar Asc 3/20-7/16
Saturn-Uranus overlap March 20 to May 20.
Jupiter would narrow it to March 20 to April 7.

Quarter: Libsolar (Dormant.)
Moon-Jupiter sq. (1°36' in mundo)

Month: Caplunar (Dormant.)
Moon-Venus sq. (0°06')

Week: Arilunar
Pluto on Asc (0°03')
Mercury on Dsc (4°48')
Moon-Venus conj. (0°22' in mundo)

Day: Capsolar Quotidian
p. Moon-Jupiter op. (0°36')
t. Mars on p. Dsc (1°24')

Day: Cansolar Quotidian & Transits
t. Sun conj. p. Moon (0°24')
p. Asc sq. p. Mercury (1°20')
p. EP conj. s. Uranus (1°44')
p. MC conj. s. Venus (1°48') [afflicted, conj. Saturn; but Saturn not angular]
--------------------------------------
t. Saturn op s. Asc (0°50')
t. Uranus sq. s. Asc (1°46')
-- Saturn-Uranus sq. (0°56')

SUMMARY
Year (Capsolar): (Dormant.) Moon-Jupiter.
Year (Cansolar): Jupiter Saturn (Mercury Venus). Venus-Saturn.
Bridge: Jupiter (Cap). Saturn Uranus (Can).
-- Quarter (Libsolar): (Dormant.) Moon-Jupiter.
Month: (Dormant.) Moon-Venus.
-- Week: Pluto (Mercury). Moon-Venus.
Day (CapQ): Mars. Moon-Jupiter.
Day (Cansolar): Mercury Venus Uranus Moon-Sun (CanQ). Saturn Uranus Saturn-Uranus (transits).

[Jim Eshelman]

Hi Jim,
the collision happened at the exact time of 17.06.50 local time Tenerife. (5.06pm 50 seconds)

source:
http://www.aviacrash.nl/paginas/rijn.htm

regards,
Florence

[Jim Eshelman]

It's a rather poor series of charts, at least to the shortest term ones.

On closer inspection, I no longer agree with this statement as written. The charts actually give us everything we might want. The problem is that they then also give us other things we don't want.

First, let's narrow our attention to the charts that matter. In this case, due to dormant Capsolar and Caplunar, we have one main solar ingress for the year (Cansolar), one main lunar ingress for the week (Arilunar), and the daily charts. Looking closely at these four charts provides a good opportunity to see how these stack layers work.

Second, the charts look quite good (the opposite of my first impression) except they introduce a great deal of Jupiter and Venus that seems entirely wrong. To see this better, I'm going to twice itemize what the charts give us, first excluding these Jupiter and Venus elements, and then focusing entirely on them. (For this breakdown, I'm acting like the CanQ does not have ingress Venus within orb of an angle, because that one contact adds other complications, e.g., the fact that the Venus was afflicted by conjunction with Saturn but the Saturn itself was not angular. That scenario is a question to address some other time. The purpose of this post is to filter out what seem to be two separate messages.

Excluding the Venus and Jupiter for a moment, the main charts show the following:

Year (Cansolar): Saturn (Mercury Venus). Venus-Saturn.
Bridge: Saturn Uranus (Can).
Week: Pluto (Mercury).
Day (CapQ): Mars.
Day (Cansolar): Mercury Uranus Moon-Sun (CanQ). Saturn Uranus Saturn-Uranus (transits).

The YEAR chart is tragic, shows the loss of life and spoiled holidays, and has a token transportation theme. The WEEK chart has high-impact Pluto tightly angular and, again, a little Mercury. The CapQ brings Mars right to an angle for the collision itself. Transiting Saturn and Uranus converge on Cansolar angles (which also gives us the two-month Bridge within which the event happened), and Mercury + Uranus on CanQ angles is spot on for an aircraft collision.

Nobody would have reason to quibble with these. They're quite good!

Then it gets complicated: Let's look at the charts again, listing only the strong Venus and Jupiter elements.

Year (Cansolar): Jupiter.
Bridge: Jupiter (Cap).
Week: Moon-Venus.
Day (CapQ): Moon-Jupiter.

To these, we can pile on from the dormant charts and mention a Moon-Jupiter aspect in the dormant Capsolar and Libsolar, and another Moon-Venus in the dormant Caplunar. I think we can all agree that this is a lot of Jupiter in particular!

This is more than a "mixed" set of indications, which we see sometimes. Rather, this is more like two separate, loud messages. It's also not sitting right with me to play the "happy vacation venue" card (maybe for the Venus, but not for the Jupiter, especially since it dominates the whole year in various ways). Most of these are Moon aspects, and we always have to juggle the question of how much an aspect affecting the entire world also affects a specific location: We usually find that it does indeed affect the individual location in some distinct way, and the exceptions are scattered, not a pile-up as in the present event.

No, I think we have to admit either that the charts are flawed or (my current view) that there is a decisive Jupiter feature of the event, something as marked and obvious and distinctive as if this were an explosion at a large church revival festival.

Having read what I can find about the event, the one feature that stands out is meteorological. However, it isn't clear-cut. It isn't rain, for example; but it's close. The accident occurred substantially because of fog that became progressively so dense that nobody could see more than about 100 yards. I'd call this the key in a moment, except that, for this airport more than 2,000 feet above sea level, dense fog isn't exactly rare. Nonetheless, it was unusually dense on this occasion (a cloud sitting right on the airport), and that density is central to the event.

I'd like this better if it only appeared in the short-term charts. Jupiter tightly on a Cansolar angle from months earlier is less persuasive to me. Nonetheless, I mention what I have, and invite your consideration and discussion.

[FlorencedeZ.]

It was of this horrendous accident that the law for take off changed.
At that time the captain had the final say. If I remember correctly it was the co-pilot who didn't want to go for take off and the captain did, so they went.
Nowadays, both have to agree, such was not the issue back then.
Sadly so.

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

There was another aircraft lost in the Canary Islands. It hit a 4200 foot mountain trying to fly over the island of Hierro in rain and heavy clouds. A violent explosion was heard the afternoon of December 11, 1977 and a search party found the first remains about three hours later. All 13 Navy men on board were killed.
Hierro is about 100 miles SW of Tenerife.

[Jim Eshelman]

There was another aircraft lost in the Canary Islands. It hit a 4200 foot mountain trying to fly over the island of Hierro in rain and heavy clouds. A violent explosion was heard the afternoon of December 11, 1977 and a search party found the first remains about three hours later. All 13 Navy men on board were killed.
Hierro is about 100 miles SW of Tenerife.

This is interesting. Do you, by chance, have full where-and-when?

[Jupiter Sets at Dawn]

No. The exact time was never given although the Navy probably has it in a report somewhere. All we heard was the rescue party just found burned pieces of bodies.

However, Hierro's very small island. Basically just that mountain. I'd guess it happened between 1 and 2 in the afternoon.

It was a four engine transport plane ferrying Navy pilots and reos (radio operators. These were two man fighter jet flight teams) to their base so they could go home for Christmas.

One of the men onboard was born May 21, 1952, in West Elmira, NY, don't have the time.