Firstly Happy New Year to everyone, and hope you’ve all had a great Christmas. Once again it’s been quite a while since I last posted a video, mostly due to work commitments and other projects. I’d like to say a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has stuck with the channel, and to all my new subscribers! The first videos of the New Year are the culmination of a small project I’ve been working on for a couple of months. Like many people, I have for many years been fascinated by the bizarre and horrific accident which befell two Boeing 747s on the island of Tenerife in March 1977. There are a lot of videos on Youtube and elsewhere about the Tenerife disaster, as it remains the world’s worst ever plane crash and is very well documented. Consequently anyone with an interest in aviation will be familiar with the story, so I wanted to do something a little bit different.

The result is ‘The Lost Tapes’ project - two short episodes which imagine how it might be if miraculous ‘lost footage’ were to emerge from that day, taken perhaps by passengers, flight crew and people on the ground. Part 1 looks at the hours leading up to the accident, beginning with Pan Am Clipper Victor’s departure from Los Angeles the day before, and the stopover in New York. We also see KLM making its fateful final departure from Amsterdam, as it too heads off to the Canary Islands. Part 2 picks up as KLM and Pan Am 747s are finally given clearance to depart Tenerife, and head for their original destination. We all know what happens next, but again this episode tries to imagine what it must have been like for the passengers and crew of both aircraft, in those last few minutes before the end. I realise some may find this quite a sombre subject – I’ve tried to be respectful with it rather than sensational, but if anyone is offended or upset by it I can only apologise. As terrible an accident as it was, Tenerife brought about many landmark changes in the world of aviation safety. In particular, the concept of Crew Resource Managament, or ‘CRM’, which broke down the old hierarchical systems of rank and authority in the cockpit to ensure that all crew members would feel able to voice concerns and spot errors which might lead to a tragedy like Tenerife.

Anyway I hope you will find these episodes interesting and/or informative, and please feel free to like, comment or subscribe. Credits: Platform Microsoft Flight Simulator X (Gold Edition SP2) Aircraft CLS Boeing 747-200HD Project Opensky Boeing 747-100 v4 Historic Jetliners Group (HJG) Boeing 737-200 HJG Douglas DC-8 HJG Lockheed L1011 Tri-star Scenery RF Scenery Building Tenerife Norte (GCXO) Sim Giants Tenerife Norte Sim Giants Gran Canaria (GCLP) Spain VFR-Mesh Canary Islands FS Dreamteam Los Angeles Intl. V2 FS Dreamteam JFK V2 Aerosoft Amsterdam Schiphol X Skies and weather Real Environment Xtreme + Overdrive Active Sky Next Others Aerosoft Airport Enhancement Services (AES) FS Dreamteam Ground Services X (GSX) FSFX PrecipitFX Sound Royalty free sound effects from soundsboom.com appear in Parts 1 and 2 Music In Part 1: ‘Pianos Left Behind 8’ by Merlean, used under licence from Epidemic Sounds In Part 2: ‘Oh the Humanity 1’ by Gavin Luke, used under licence from Epidemic Sounds Images Pictures used at the end of Part 2 are credited where possible to their original sources as they appear. Please let me know if I have miscredited any image, and I will rectify immediately. Legal This video does not contain any material, visual or audio, from other youtube videos. Please do not use any segments from this video without my prior permission. Thank you.