Doomed to Fail - Ep 68 - You're Cleared for Disaster: The Tenerife Airport Crash of 1977

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Welp. Just in time for holiday travel, Farz decided to tell us about the Tenerife Airport Disaster in 1977. Experienced pilots met with fog, a terrorist threat, fueling issues, confused air traffic controllers... All relatively small things that were in just the right order to cause the deadliest Plane Crash of all time.Anyone (like Taylor) who had a serious fear of flying to get over will have Wikipedia'd this story, it's a doozy. One time, mid-panic attack, a flight attendant told her she could die a thousand deaths, or she could enjoy flying and just have the one, however it comes. Which was very helpful, not all heroes wear capes.Enjoy Thanksgiving with your family, y'all!! Don't bring up politics, may we suggest plane crashes & emperors?Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And boom, we're back, Taylor. It's Wednesday. We are recording again tomorrow's Thanksgiving. We want to give thanks for you, the listener, me, the host. Taylor the host

and me sweet and Taylor mostly Taylor sweet welcome to do you to fail the podcast where we cover a true crime or historical event I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor

it is Wednesday tomorrow is Thanksgiving but we're an evergreen show so I was going to cover a Thanksgiving topic but decided not to because we are evergreen so we're not doing that we're doing something else I don't know I don't know I feel like you have done that

I did Napoleon and the movie's coming out today. Should we cancel recording and just? I'm just saying I don't, there are no rules. So I just don't want you to feel like you're beholden to any rules that we made up. We're just like Opeck Steakhouse. No rules, just right. We definitely said that before. So, exactly.

So today, Taylor, I'm going to be drinking rum because we, much like your story, are going to be focused on islands that are owned by the Spaniards. All right. Cool, right? Yeah. So this one, this story is a little bit unique. Because it kind of falls in line with like disasters and true crime and kind of all kind of come in mixing, mix together.

So the topic I'm going to be covering. is the deadliest aviation aviation accident in history have you ever heard do you know who which one is the deadliest one in history is this one with the pan am plane yes yes i love this one of course i knew you would know terrible terrible way in like a of course i've spent hours googling plane graduates yeah i actually i think i watched this one while i was on a plane

it was like man i do not look like the kind of person that should be watching this like I'm the wrong shade oh my gosh your your the person behind you was like oh my god what the fuck is this guy doing one time taylor I was on a plane and I had like I like have these cords in my um my statue that has my laptop in it so I like the laptop charger phone charger the headset charger all this shit that was in there and this like 60 year old like texan like super super southern baptist white woman was like behind me and i started pulling these quarts out and the look on her face like she was fucking terrified it was incredible i was like man what must be like to go through life like this i'm sorry i'm sorry for you i'm sorry that

america is racist well it was it was it was one example but i'm sure a lot of people have had that same thought just didn't express the way she did just fucking sheer absolute terror it was awesome Another time you know what I'm not going to tell that story yet. I'm going to save some of the intrigue for later on But I'm excited this is what I've definitely thought about doing as well. So I'm excited to hear from you Seriously? Yeah, because it's it's such a crazy story and I think that you're going to get into it. But it's one of those things where like 7,000 crazy things go wrong. Yes. Yes. In things in ways that you wouldn't expect. Yeah. Yes. So So this is called the Tenor Reef disaster. And I am going to, you know, I wrote here that, like, I made like a little side note about how much I fucking hate musicals.

And then I started putting this into a three-part act and was like, why do I keep doing acts when I hate musicals? But anyways, we'll carry on. Well, I think a lot of plays have musicals, or plays have acts, not just musicals, but. kind of like plays either why is it because you feel embarrassed because sometimes it's you feel embarrassed with people on stage it's just like it's like how is this better than a jay brockheimer movie it's just this different whatever we'll let's talk about that later we'll have another but it's a good way to organize a story is what we're getting to so that's fine we'll have another episode where we just debate musicals versus jay bry bry

I used to not like them, and then I just, I feel like maybe we should have another lazy Sunday and I'll make you watch Oklahoma. One day. Because that sounds fun. Yeah. So the three acts to my story are number one, the setup. Basically, like you said before, this accident required a ton of preexisting conditions to occur before it happens. So the setup's kind of important. Then you have the accident.

Then you have kind of a breakdown of the causes, essentially. And I'm going to do a little bit of an epilogue to this one about where things currently stand with the state of aviation safety because we are about to head down a very slippery slope, which is good for me. I'm super excited because I'm definitely going on a plane in a few weeks. I know. I thought about that too. I'll see you in North Carolina. Yeah, you might not. Jesus Christ.

So getting dark here. So the date we're talking about is March 27th, 1977. Two planes were making a trip to the Canary Islands, and the two planes were KLM 4805. KLM is a Dutch pasture carrier. It's basically their version of American Airlines. And this plane was flying from Amsterdam with 14 crew and 235 pastures. Then you have Pan Amp 1736. That one originated that day out of LAX before it stopped at JFK in New York, before making its way across the Atlantic, carrying 380 pastures and 16 crew.

Both of these planes are 747s. 747s are the biggest planes. Well, no, actually the Airbus A380 is down the biggest plane in the world. But for like 45 years, this is the biggest plane. This is the hump one, the one that has a hump in the front of it. Like two stories? Yes, so two stories. Okay. um both planes had exceptionally well trained and qualified pilots i mean i'm saying all this because

there's a reason for it like just so everybody knows like this was this was not like you know somebody gave a joystick to like a 10 year old and the plane crash like that's what we're talking right which happened in one of the other ones that have researched we got to talk about that one after this then but uh both these crews were incredibly well trained so the klm pilot in in particular is going to become relevant later on that captain the one in charge was a guy named jacob van zaten and van zaten was klm's main flight instructor for pilots who were trying to get certified on the 747 in fact the people that were on the plane with him the code pilot was certified by this main pilot van zaten he was also on all of klm's advertisements like he was

the face of the brand from the pilot's perspective essentially Both planes were on their way to an island in the Canaries called Las Palmas to land at the airport there, which was basically, it was just a normal airport, multiple runways. They were used to receiving a lot of traffic, a lot of international traffic, a lot of jumbo jet traffic. So that was the idea. That was what they're trying to do. So around 1 p.m. on this day, there was a terrorist group with, it's got to learn acronyms because this is a horribly, horribly long game. So the terrorist group was called the Movement for the Independence and Autonomy of the Canary Archery. Capella go. It's like, come on. Like, let's get it. It's not good. Yeah. Call yourself the canaries.

That's even cooler and darker. You wear masks. That is cool. Okay. So these guys called the airport authorities in Las Palmas and told them there was a bomb in the terminal and that they had 15 minutes before it exploded. The airport evacuated. And as promised, 15 minutes after that call, a bomb did explode at a floral shop that was in the terminal, which injured eight people. and they had a shut of the airport. They're like, for some reason, they thought that there was another bomb on site, but Long's pretty short was they ended up saying,

no more inbound traffic, we're making everybody from the terminal, and that was basically it. So these two planes that were about to land at this airport, they just had this bomb explode, started circling the airport, and the air traffic controllers in Los Palmas flight just divert.

Like, there's another, island 74 miles away called Tenerife, they have an airport there, go land there because we have no idea how long it's going to take for this to open. If you keep circling, you might run out of fuel and crash anyways. So we've seen that die harder too. Yeah, exactly. Well, I haven't, but you have. That happens to die hard too. There you go. Thank you. So Tenerife is, like I said, it's another island in the canaries owned by Spain, like kind of the synchronicity between our our stories there. And basically, they have this one airport in Tenerife. It's called Los Rodeos. And this was a regional airport. So this was like a puddle jumper airport. Like I remember when I went to Fiji and when you fly into Fiji, you land at the main, like the biggest island in Fiji and that's kind of like the central hub. But Fiji has like 300 islands. So you go to most of them. And what you get on to go there is a absolutely terrifying experience where it's just you and like one other person in the pilot. And the pilot is just like has coffee stains all over them and they're using papers to like navigate where they are.

Like it is a nightmarish experience. I've had it once before. But that's the kind of traffic that was meant to suit Las Rodeos, the airport that's on Tenor Reeve. But this day, they found themselves trying to host these two. the Pan Am and the KLM flight, as well as three other wide-body jets, other 747s. And because of that, there was not a ton of space to taxi. There was not a ton of space at a terminal or on the runway itself. So for this part, I wrote down, I'm going to use my hands to paint you a picture,

Taylor, but we're not on screen, so you're going to have to use your brain. So I'm going to articulate it. So I'm going to tell you what. what the layout was of the runway and taxiway at Los Rodeus, okay? So, picture a rectangle sitting down lengthwise on its side. Like a runway. Much like a runway. Got it, picture.

The bottom of that rectangle is the runway. It's a nice big runway. The top of the rectangle is the taxiway. way where the terminal is and where you go to kind of just get off the runway and go to the terminal right between the taxiway and the runway to the top of the rectangle and the bottom the rectangle there are four off ramps connecting the two and we're going to refer to these as exits so exit one is connected connects the two in a straight line so basically if you're trying to go on or off either one of them you take a 90 degree turn either way Make sense?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exit two and three. Those connect the taxiway and the runway at a backslash angle so that if you're at a small regional apologizing plane, you can exit halfway or so down the runway to the terminal. So basically it's at the end of the runway or like, it's same in there. It's like closer to like halfway to the runway. So you just basically pull off, you do like a little 30 degree turn and then you're off and you're at the terminal.

then you have exit four which is a forward slash angle and it's set up this way so that if you don't have space to use the taxi way two or more planes can follow each other down the runway the trailing plane can take exit four the lead plane can go to the end of the runway and make a u-turn that's the idea got it good so given where these two planes ended up parking once they landed in tennar reef the klm is the lead plane in this example and the Pan Am is the trailing plane. The Pan Am didn't really want to be in the trailing plane spot because they were already cleared to take off and head back to Los Palmas ahead of the KLM plane because the captain of the KLM plane decided that he wanted to refuel at Tenorreef as opposed to Las Palmas. So originally the plan was you land in Las Palmas,

you refuel and then he flies back to Amsterdam. Now he has to land in Tenor Reef, then Las Palmas, then Amsterdam's like, fuck it, I'm just going to refill here. it'll make it a lot easier. This ended up causing a delay about 35 minutes, and the Pan Am plane couldn't get around the KLM plane. So everybody was waiting for this KLM plane to get refueled. During this time, this 35 minutes,

a fog starts settling in on the runway. The one was already overpacked, and that day there was only two air traffic controllers working, and at this point, they really can't see anything that's going on on the runway. Like, it was visibility conditions that ordinarily means, that you would never allow anybody to take off because you can't see more. I forgot what it was. It was like 300 feet in front of you.

If you can't see more than 300 feet in front of you, you can't take off. And they couldn't see 300 feet in front of them. In addition of that, there was no ground radar. So there was zero visibility of what was going on outside. So, act to the accident. Oh, scared. 35 minutes passed, and the K-LM was finally ready to kind of start going down the runway to taxi and take off. Again, because the taxiway was packed full of planes of the terminal, everyone leading Los Rodeos had to use the runway as the taxiway to get into position to take off.

So the idea was the KLM as lead plane would go down the runway until it gets to the end, make a U-turn, and then go down the opposite direction of the runway to take off. The P&M would follow the KLM down the runway, but obviously it needs to get out of the way. So it would take one of the exits I mentioned earlier to get out of the way and light itself up behind the KLM and then take off behind it. So around 5 p.m. that day, the two planes set off on the runway with Pan Am being instructed to take Exit 3. Exit 3 is the forward slash exit. It was obvious and I actually listened to and then read the Cockman voice recorders of this, which is totally harrowling. But on the voice recorder, you can hear. here that this crew is super confused as like what eggs they're supposed to take and it makes

sense for reasons I'll get to later why they were so confused and it was interesting because like the air traffic controllers were fucking dicks about it like they're like being such jerks to the pilots the pilots were asking them a ton of like you said three like three like wait are you saying one two three and like one two three is like you know no like they're they're so confused about this and the air traffic controls like fuck these guys like they're just trying to be rude to us or something and they were being really mean to them were they speaking in in english yeah there's yeah english is the common language of all okay everything so um but i'll explain why they shouldn't have been jerks to them here

a minute so because they shouldn't have been jerks to them well yeah well okay so basically part of the reason why there was confusion was a there was no markings on the exits so you had to count to the exit but as you're going down the runway you're also doing your takeoff checklist so you have to run through all okay this button is up that button is down you have to do all this shit and all top of that there's fog so you can't really see the runways anyways but in addition of that it would become obvious that a plane of the size of a 747 would have been impossible to have done a forward slash turn the way that they were asking for it essentially looked like a back like a backward z is how it would have looked it would be like 150 degrees it would an impossible to make the turn

and that's also part of the confused like what are you talking about like how am i supposed to do you sure you're saying three anyways so four minutes after starting down the runway the klm gets to the very end it makes its you turn in a radius to air driving controllers to tell them that they're ready to takeoff. The air traffic controller does what is basically standard procedure and tells them what their route is going to be once they take off. So here's what, this is a quote of what the air traffic controller says to the KLM plane. KLM 8705, you are clear to the Papa Beacon, climb to and maintain flight level 90, right turn after takeoff, proceed with heading 040 until intercepting the 325 radial from Las Palmas, V-O-R.

I have no idea what the fuck that means. You're right and not understand that. What you should have been said after all of this was said, was cleared for takeoff. That's the universal language used for, he said you're cleared to. He didn't say you're cleared to takeoff. So at the very beginning, he says, you are clear to pop a beacon. He didn't say you're clear to takeoff. takeoff and was he cleared for takeoff or no he was not clear for takeoff but at that

but he said the word you're cleared okay yeah at that point the pilot van zettin in dutch says we're going and you hear the engines spool up on the plane on on that part so we do we do here on the klm side the air traffic controller saying okay but do but due to interference on the radio uh what he was actually saying was okay standby for takeoff i will call you so the pilot says we're okay we're going and a in the air traffic controller says okay and then it's just static because it's interference but what he was saying was okay standby for takeoff right got it so by this point the pan am was still on the runway had he gotten confused between exit three and four at At 506, I pulled this all off the actual, the transfer of the flight data recorder.

So it goes by second seconds. So this is all within the 506 timeframe. It's 506 PM, but at 35 seconds, someone on the KLM flight inquires where the pandemic is cleared, but they don't press the issue. Like it's, they're like wondering if the plane has been clear the runway yet. At the 41 second mark. They can't see each other, right? Or they can't see each other. Well, so the 41 second mark is the first time anybody sees anybody.

So the 41 second mark, six seconds after the engine starts pulling up, the Pan Am captain sees the lights on the landing gear of the KLM and realizes the plane in front of them is trying to take off in front of them. Two seconds later, the KLM pilot realized the Pan Am is in his way. And at this point, he's going approximately 161 miles per hour. And at that point, you can't break in time. And so he's, you hear him on the, this is a 906, uh, almost, almost. It's 5.0.6 p.m. And at this point, it's too late to break. The captain says v1, which is what you do to kind of start, that means like you have no choice.

You have to take off and you pull back on the yoke and to try and look at the nose of the plane up. At the 50 second mark, six seconds after he says pull up on the yoke, V1, you hear the collision on both voice recorders. So what happened was when the PANM saw the KLM heading towards them, they applied full power and tried to steer the plane into the grass got out of the way. They never found the exit. Like even where the plane was landing, it was never at the exit. When the KLM realized the PANN was in front of them, they tried to take off prematurely,

and they ended up scraping the bottom of the plane on the ground for about 72 feet. So they're trying to get up and going. the nose did clear the Pan Am. It was the engines in the landing gear that caught the plane lengthwise. So picture that. I mean, they're teaboning each other, right? Well, well, the K-LM is teaboting the Pan-M.

They're not face-to-face. It's T-woning it? Yeah, they're teaboting it. Okay. Yeah. The K-LM actually became airborne briefly before it crashed, and because they had filled the complete fuel tanks up,

it just erupted into a massive fireball. Basically, not basically, literally everyone on the KLM died. So 248 people died on the KLM and 335 people on the Pan Am died. Sixty-one people survived. Plus one woman who didn't re-board the plane after it landed in Tenebree because she was like, fuck, I don't want to go to Las Palmas anymore. In total, about 583 people ended up dying that day. Oh, my God.

So act three is the causes. This is so interesting because, again, so many things have to come together. So there's a concept of aviation known as the Swiss cheese model, which sounds delicious. But really what it is is if you line up a bunch of slices of Swiss cheese, like, you might be able to get through one hole, but the next slice will stop you. Or if that one doesn't stop you, the third one stops you. And so aviation security and safety is kind of built around this concept of the Swiss cheese model. and so as a result if one thing goes wrong usually it's not a big deal two things go wrong three things like most of the time it's not a big deal it's only when a bunch of stuff converge and that's

what ended up happening in this situation so let's go through the cause real quick so first things first terrorism so apparently god the history history's insane so spain so the canary islands had indigenous people there and spain invaded and made it spanish territory and so these natives were fighting back i mean you know we're calling it terrorism like it was basically like a march against colonialism is really what it was if they hadn't did what they did that day in los palmas the planes were presumably landed fine and everything would have been fine like yeah we would have any issues. To their credit, they did say that they should not be blamed for this. I just love the idea of like a terrorist group having a PR firm be like, look, we look like assholes. We got to get

ahead of this. Yes, we just set a ball off. We had nothing to do with this, you guys. Yeah. Which is true. Like they could that wasn't. Yeah. Like it's exactly that. Like it's so many things had to happen for this to happen. So it's not the terrorist fault, but like they started it. But also definitely started it. Also, yeah, let's, I'm laughing because I'm going to throw up. I'm glad we have it on tape and it's being recorded. The other is weather. So the weather in Tenerife sucked. So the visibility, like I mentioned before, under any other circumstances, would have violated

air traffic regulations for them to take off in. But at that point, there was nowhere to put these planes. There were too big. There were too many giant fucking planes in a tiny, tiny airport. And so they had to be like, guys, just get out of here. Like, somehow get out of here. the other had to do with a duty time regulations so this is the amount of time a pilot or flight crew they are allowed to work and be operational so currently it sits at eight hours for pilots

and 10 for crew members i had this exact same situation happening like a few months back when i was in dc where like my flight kept getting delayed and pushed back and by time we boarded a storm it came in to dc and they're like we have to wait a little storm passes and all of a sudden it's 30 minutes like thing i can't fly we won't lay in the time for me to like be operating operational safety window so the idea was that this pilot captain manzattan he was in a rush he was trying to get everybody over to los palmas so he could board up as much as quickly as possible and fly back to amsterdam to be home that night um because because so much this was based on his impatience the fact that he wanted to refuel was based on his impatience that slowed everybody

down the fact that he didn't listen for commands that was impatience and there's another constant you're going to bring up here in a second so the refueling part so the runway at tennarife is 10,203 feet the klm struck the pan am in the six to five to six thousand foot mark of it so like a little over halfway down the runway a fully loaded 747 needs that minimum minimum 7,200 feet to reach the speed it needs to take off. The amount of weight added to the plane when he decided to refill in Tenerife as opposed to Los Palmas, about 32 tons, fucking huge amount of weight, right? Yeah.

The idea is that it is possible that if he had not refueled and he had the patience to just go to Las Palmas and do what he was supposed to do there and refill there. that he would have had a light enough way to have taken off and missed the plane. But even more critical, if he didn't do that, if he didn't refuel, he wouldn't have wasted 35 minutes before the fog came in and obstructed all the views. So that on its own could have prevented everything as well. The other one is a concept known as Cockpit Radiant. So junior cockpit crew on KLM had expressed construction.

They had asked it and been like, is the Pan Am gone? Are we sure it's gone? But the other guy, Vanzan was so senior that nobody really listened to him. Or they were like, they didn't want to press the issue with him. He's like, if he says it's okay, it's okay. Like, fuck what I know and what my instincts are telling me. I got to listen to what this guy says. And like, are you going to talk about this far as I'm sorry? But that like KLM tried to call him to do PR after it?

Yeah, yeah. No, they didn't call him to do PR after it. They, they, the executive leadership team at KLM, when they heard about this crash, they're like, okay, we got to send people over there, send Van Zaten, he's the most trained and qualified person. Like, he was the one flying the plane. He's dead. Yeah, like they couldn't have imagined that he was involved in it because they were like, he's a number of one guy. Yeah, exactly. So this is like such a crazy.

So this is so common in aviation for some reason. So there was one story I read about a United Captain who's landing gear, it was, it wasn't showing. there was in a locked position so he kept circling the airport basically trying to figure out how to get this thing to show that it's in a locked position before he before he lands the crew you could hear telling him like we're running low on gas we're running low on gas they're kind of just hinting at it until the engines flamed out and they just fucking plummeted earth it was like everybody knew except the captain running out the most basic essential yeah it's so wild like why didn't like I don't know did you also hear about in my research of plane crashes which of

which I've done a ton how like there were a lot of plane crashes like in South Korea because the pilots were too polite yeah yeah so yeah so that is part of um again there's so many different things came together so the other part of it yeah to your your example there that is part of the reason why English became the primary language because okay so like in Farsi for example Like, there's ways of making language differential and, like, super flowery. Right, like, when you talk to your parents or you talk to someone like a higher social status, whatever the fuck that means, like, you're supposed to be like, you don't just say like,

hey, how you doing? You're like, the honor is all mine for being in your presence. You know, you mean, like, it's just like, it's just over the top fucking, like, super regal language. And because of that, you can't, there's no actual words for urgency. because urgency isn't proper, you know? And so Korean or I thought it was Korean or Japanese, whichever one, their language is like that. It's like Farsi, where it's just like they were so flowery.

And it was like, hey, we're about to fly into a mountain. And like your most excellent regal majesty, sir, with all due respect, all of a sudden you're fucking dead. Yeah, exactly. That's part of the reason why English became the standardized language. Because English doesn't have that. So. Yeah.

Totally makes sense. but now there is a thing called crew resource management was basically a management style saying that anybody inside the cockpit has equal power to challenge anybody else's opinions and the captain should listen look it doesn't make any difference because like these are humans in human institutions and people just going to do what they're going to do right so like yes you should like after this came out after crew resource management as a concept came out and became part of pilot training there's like another 300 plane crashes that happened because people didn't say anything so like you're right didn't fix it forever yeah you're not going to fix humans like until the drones take over like we're this is going to keep happening so overall so the spanish government took charge the investigation Kela and Panam sent people over there there's a number of findings in additional ones i just listed out but overall they blamed captain manzan and KLA for the crash saying he took off without emergency proper clearance there's other things they came out around this which was the standardization of other forms of language so for example

you could never use like now you can never use like colloquialisms like okay or roger like it has to be very very by the books and in the end KLM paid out what was then 110 million what is today $553 million to the families of the victims what's really interesting and you should totally do this because I know this is like you're up your alley there's a podcast um So the New York Times is a podcast called The Daily. And on September 5th, they, this is terrible, they released an episode, in the title of the episode is pasture planes nearly collide far more than you know. Did you hear this? I think I feel like I've, I've read the, there's an article about it that was in like the Times or something.

But yes, because it like, and on the ground, right? On the ground and in the air. So what they were, what they said was that based on some data that they collected for several teams, for example, they found that there was about one per day, at minimum one per day of what's called a close contact or the FAA refers to a skin-to-skin contact, which is airplanes basically touching skins, which is really, really bad. And that was not including the database controlled and documented by NASA, which includes 300. close calls so far this year and this was done in September so 300 in nine months basically long story short was that in the 1980s the air traffic controllers went on strike and air traffic controllers are federal employees and during this time Reagan was president was in legally it was it was considered illegal for them to not work and so Reagan fired them all and hired new ones

So what ended up happening was because everybody got hired at the same time, everyone's now retiring at the same time, right? And so there's a wave of mass retirements for air traffic controllers. And then when the FAA started ranting up hiring of air traffic controllers, they faced the next issue, which was COVID hitting. So basically what ended up happening was that there wasn't enough people who were qualified enough. enough to train and also man the boots of air traffic control. And so now you have lesser trained, less qualified people in air traffic control as well as not having as many as you need anyways. So right now, there's about 10% less air traffic controllers and less trained air traffic

controllers than you would actually want in operation. Only three airports out of 313 of the United States are currently fully staffed and basically like doing what is expected of their job so so you're saying it's it's Ronald Reagan's fault basically all was on Ronald like it was really interesting was they said they said to me on this episode they were like it's funny because we usually do these episodes when something bad happens but you're telling us like now we know something that's going to happen they called the FAA the Tombstone Agency because they're like they only take action after there's been a bunch of deaths which is like kind of what

they're seeing right now anyways it's terrifying Cool. I'll see you in New York, North Carolina. You know, I used to be super scared on planes. Now I'm like just regular scared on means, but like, I feel like also, oh, I don't fucking care, you know? I'm going to, I'd rather go to Jay's wedding than not. And the other, it's fine.

The other fun thing they mentioned was that because of COVID, all these airlines who were carrying these inflated air, um, captain. and salaries decided to furlough a shitload of them. And when COVID came back and air, air transport came back, those guys all decided to retire. So what they did was they were just hiring these like 25 year olds who were doing like regional flights to like manage these giant airplanes.

And so now you have inexperienced air traffic controllers, too few of them and also inexperienced pilots. So that Swiss cheese model is kind of coming to kind of a chaotic in conclusion here. Honestly, it's a miracle that we don't have, that we don't have one every day. You know what I mean? Yeah. They're doing pretty great, all things considered.

Yeah, I agree. Did you hear about that guy who's on shrooms who tried to down a plane the other day? No. There was a pilot who last podcast talked about it in their side stories, but this dude was like off, off duty on a plane, but he had done shrooms like three days before and it was messing with him. thought he was in a dream so he tried to like pull a lover that would like turn off the gas to the engine and then they ended having to like tie him down and he's like ever I was fine but he is charged with like 180 counts of attempted murder or something like his life is fucking over because he's on shrooms I don't know I don't he wasn't working but they shouldn't

let him in like yeah yeah that seems like a weird waste of shrooms um so anyways that's my story tennarief the worst airplane accident in history two seven 4747 is the worst case. I mean, the only thing they could be worse than that now would be like in eight, two eight, three 80s doing that. Yeah. That is terrible. But anyways, there we have it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Remember, remember, thank your pilgrims. Thank the corn. Yeah, that's almost exactly what you should do. And, you know, if you want to, you know, talk about, go go see Napoleon. If you, um, All right, to fight with someone in your family. You can just leave and go to the movies. It's a good day to go to the movies.

Help your mom, if she needs help in the kitchen. And have a good time. Also, just don't talk politics. Like, it's so easy. It's so easy. Like, when we're, I don't know, like when we were kids, like talking about politics wasn't normal. And so if you have a crazy uncle or a crazy in-law,

just like, don't talk about it. Like, it's so easy. I know. I feel like I'm going to just get a little worried they might like one off something like trans people aren't real you know and you'd be like oh my god just pass this stuffing you know but um if everybody agrees to it or everybody has to agree or if you hear that all you do is say pass this stuffing that's it does anyone have any shrooms you are not going to change your family members you're not going to change everybody's mind

they're not going to change your mind just keep peace and move on with your lives it's true so you're nice to your mom cool that is it thank you for us I love that story because it's absolutely

bananas and scary and so many little things happened and it's just a whole a whole thing oh there is several episodes seconds to disaster

and may day both have they're both free to watch on YouTube and they do really cool reconstructions of

what this looked like when it happened and so YouTube at Tenerife just do Tenerife plane and it is the number one thing that's going to pop up and we hope you're okay after you do that

I wonder what mind or mid journey is going to come up with for this one I'm scared I'm going to ask it but I'm nervous and maybe it'll say no I hope it says no but we'll see we'll see

but yeah thanks Taylor thanks so much Fars remember everyone at Dumifil Pond write to us at Doom to Philpott or hold on right to us

Yeah, right to us at Doomdifelpod at gmail.com. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Sweet. And please, please, yes, follow, tell your friends. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Faris. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving.