Tenerife disaster

The Tenerife airport disaster, which occurred on March 27, 1977, remains the accident with the highest number of airliner passenger fatalities. 583 people died when a KLM Boeing 747 attempted to take off without flight clearance and collided with a taxiing Pan Am 747 at Los Rodeos Airport on the Canary Island of Tenerife, Spain. There were no survivors from the KLM aircraft and only 61 of the 396 passengers and crew on the Pan Am aircraft survived. Pilot error was the primary cause, as the KLM captain began his takeoff run without obtaining air traffic control clearance.