Dan-Air Flight 1008, a Boeing 727-46, crashed on the 25th of April in 1980. The flight was a charter that departed from Manchester Airport in the United Kingdom, and was heading to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The plane flew into Mount La Esperanza on approach to the Island after it engaged in a holding pattern, killing all 138 passengers and 8 crew members. It was Dan-Air’s worst accident ever, and the 5th fatal crash in 22 years.
The flight was on approach to the airport in Tenerife when it was cleared for an approach to runway 12. The aircraft was at an altitude of 11,000 feet when it was cleared to descend down to 6,000 feet. The crew reported that it was passing over the reference beacon ‘TFN’ when it was instructed by Air Traffic Control to enter a “non-standard” holding pattern over the next beacon ‘FP’. The holding pattern was not a published procedure, so the crew did not have a chart for it. The flight deck accepted the instruction, but the aircraft was actually south of beacon ‘FP’ when they called out “entering the hold”. One minute later, they were then cleared to descend down to the 5,000 foot level.
The Captain appeared to believe he was entering the hold pattern according to the Spanish air traffic controller’s instructions. In Reality, the aircraft turned to the southeast and entered a mountainous area of the island where the actual minimum safe altitude was approximately 14,500 feet. The cockpit was soon filled with the sound of the “Ground Proximity Warning System” (GPWS), resulting in the crew initiated a full power climb. The aircraft banked to the right, where it crashed into Mount La Esperanza around 1:21 pm local time. The crew was unable to see the mountains in the clouds when it crashed.
The Spanish investigation concluded that the accident occurred because the pilot failed to maintain the proper altitude, taking the aircraft into an area of high terrain. A subsequent British investigation found that the Spanish air traffic controls instructions to enter an unpublished holding pattern directly contributed to the disorientation of the flight crew. The British report also concluded that the unpublished holding pattern made the entry into the region of high ground inevitable for an aircraft, even without the navigational errors made by the Dan-Air flight crew. The report added that the directed altitude of 5,000 feet for the hold was inadequate, and that the minimum altitude for entry into the holding pattern should have been at least 8,000 feet. Had a minimum safe altitude calculation been performed ahead of time by a “competent” authority, the British concluded that the accident would not have occurred.
