Featured Image Credit: CBS/Youtube
Topics: History, World News
Brenna Cooper
A woman who survived the deadliest aircraft accident in history which killed 583 has recalled the harrowing ordeal.
On 27 March 1977 aviation history would change forever when two planes collided on the runway at Tenerife's Los Rodeos Airport (now called Tenerife North) and killed 583 out of the 644 people onboard both aircraft.
Following a terrorist attack at an airport in Gran Canaria, all flights bound for the island were re-routed to the much smaller Los Rodeos - causing the airport to swiftly become overwhelmed.
The diversion, coupled with poor weather conditions and a miscommunication between air traffic control and the pilots of KLM Flight 4805, led to disaster when the KLM flight attempted to take off and subsequently slammed into the side of Pan Am Flight 1736 which had been travelling along the runway at the time.
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The collision would kill all 248 onboard the KLM while just 61 of the 396 passengers and crew on the Pan Am would survive. The crash remains the deadliest air accident in aviation history, with a final death toll of 583.
One of the 61 lucky souls to survive the crash onboard the Pan Am was Joani Feathers, who was travelling to the Canary Islands for a Mediterranean cruise with her boyfriend at the time.
Feathers recalled being anxious about the proximity of the KLM plane that afternoon, recalling in an interview with The Daytona Beach Journal how she voiced her concerns to then boyfriend Jack Ridout.
His response would be a chilling omen of what was to come.
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"Don’t worry. If he hits us, you won’t feel a thing," he told her.
After declining an invitation to enjoy a drink in the upstairs lounge, Joani buckled her seatbelt and waited for the KLM to clear the runway.
Just moments later she would find herself sat in a cabin which had been torn apart by the KLM, with the upstairs bar they'd been invited to completely gone.
Both she and Jack were injured, but alive - with the couple now left to navigate escaping from the wreckage.
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The aftermath of the crash was horrific, with Joani recalling seeing one woman 'cut in half' by her seatbelt while another woman with curlers in her hair was on fire.
Leaning on survival skills picked up from her years working in law enforcement, Joani and her boyfriend scrambled to make their way off the destroyed airliner. Joani made it off the plane and sprinted as far away as she could while her boyfriend stayed behind to help an air stewardess deploy an escape raft. He would later flee for his life after a subsequent explosion decapitated the woman.
Joani recalled then seeing the plane explode like an 'atom bomb' before she and her boyfriend were taken to hospital, where she was able to make contact with her mother.
Joani has flown multiple times in the years since the crash, however the disaster is never far from her thoughts.
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"It's always on my mind when I get on a plane," she said.