The incident, as a controller told this newspaper yesterday, is one of the worst that has been experienced after the serious plane crash in the history of Spain, when that unfortunate March 27, 1977, a Boeing 747 from the Dutch company KLM and another 747 of the North American company Pan Am hit, leaving the tragic balance of 583 corpses on the Tenerife airfield.
As reported by COPE Canarias on its website, the events took place around 2:30 p.m. local time, when Iberia flight 23937 had begun the take-off operation and, a few seconds after getting up from the ground, the pilot had to abort the flight. maneuver and brake hard.
As one of the passengers stated, once the plane stopped, it was the captain who informed the passenger, through the public address system, that he had been forced to make this decision because “at the same time, another plane was starting the flight. approach for landing on the same runway ”, and pointing out that if we had taken off“ we would have collided the two planes in the air ”.
The flight that would have crossed his path was the one that carried the code UX9118 as a reference, a device from the Air Europa company, coming from Madrid and bound for Los Rodeos, which for unknown reasons had to frustrate the first attempt at landing and do it again 20 minutes later than planned.
Aena sources indicated yesterday that the crew of the plane undertaking the landing maneuver considered that they would not have enough time to synchronize both actions and, consequently, chose to delay their maneuver, undertaking a detour in order to gain time. In turn, the pilot of the Iberia plane received instructions to frustrate takeoff. The aircraft left the runway and, after the pertinent checks, ended up taking off for Madrid, from which the plane that was involved in this situation had come.
“The stewardess was pale”
“The stewardess who was next to me was completely pale and the truth is that we were all very nervous, because it was a big scare,” said a passenger on the Iberia plane, who decided to get off the plane and suspend his trip to Madrid .
It is not the first time that this type of alarm situation has occurred at the aerodrome located on lagoon soil. In December 2013, with a heavy rain and wind storm hitting the Archipelago, a device that covered the route between the islands of Gran Canaria and Tenerife went off the runway when it was making the landing maneuver without luckily the passage would suffer any damage. The company specified that the device had run off the runway “due to excess water”, but that it had no significant damage.
December 2013
There were 51 passengers and 4 crew members on that plane. At first none of them appeared to have suffered injuries, to the point that they were all able to disembark from the aircraft under their own power. However, after the accident it was reported that, as a result of the emergency maneuver, a person had suffered a slight ankle sprain.
This incident forced the Los Rodeos airport runway to be temporarily closed for about two hours, in a day in which up to twenty inter-island flights had to be canceled as a result of the rainy and windy storm that Wednesday almost eight years ago it was affecting the archipelago.
Company statement
Iberia states in a statement that flight I23937 had to abort takeoff when it was on the runway “by order of the control tower.” The company specifies that “at all times the security procedures have been followed and the instructions of the controllers who, before the landing of another plane, have requested to abort the take-off have been followed.” They emphasize that it is a common maneuver, “for which the crews are prepared”, and that both this and others “train in simulators.” They confirm that, following the required safety procedures, “the crew has acted appropriately and at no time has safety been compromised.” Once the take-off was aborted, the plane returned to the parking lot to refuel, allow the brakes to cool after the maneuver, carry out the safety check and operate the scheduled flight normally again, finally taking off at 3:24 p.m. local time. | ED
