The Municipality of La Laguna will remember this Tuesday, March 29, the 583 people who lost their lives in the biggest accident in aviation history, which occurred on March 27, 1977 at the Los Rodeos airport. On the occasion of its 45th anniversary, the Department of Cemeteries is finalizing the details of an act with which it wants to pay tribute to the victims, consisting of the placement of a commemorative plaque in the San Juan cemetery, where the remains of the deceased rest. that could not be identified.
The mayor, Luis Yeray Gutiérrez, details that it will be “a simple ceremony with which we want to honor the people who lost their lives in this event and their families, because many of them were never able to recover the bodies of their loved ones to be able to say goodbye properly. from them”.
With this act, from the local Corporation “we commemorate that March 27, 45 years ago as a sign of our solidarity and respect for the victims and relatives, with a plaque that remembers that there, in that place of the cemetery of San Juan , rest many of the people who perished in the tragedy, “adds the local councilor.
For her part, the mayor of Cemeteries, Cristina Ledesma, reported that “the details of the ceremony are being finalized”, to which the representation of the associations created as a result of this event, as well as personalities from the Government of the Canary Islands, are invited. and the Cabildo of Tenerife.
In addition, he points out that “small tasks have also been carried out to beautify the area where the remains are found, for example, with the placement of flowers.” To save the memory of the deceased “as they deserve”, a base will also be placed with a commemorative plaque, which “will be discovered this Tuesday (at 12:00 noon) in a discreet and simple act”. This element will be added to the Spiral Staircase that is currently in Mesa Mota, a sculpture with 583 metal steps (one for each fatality).
This event, caused by the collision of two Boeing 747 aircraft, is the incident with the largest number of deaths in the history of aviation. Only 61 passengers survived. The damaged planes were flight 4805, a charter flight of the Dutch airline KLM, and flight 1736, a regular Pan Am flight, which was flying from John F. Kennedy International Airport.
