Crosshollow (and other things)

I'm still terrible at painting from scratch so I ended up using this really circuitous method where I photobash a reference and use it to come up with a colour zone map and then go in and paint colour variations on top (in this case skin tone variations) and then paint the final piece using those colours. It's just like, so hard for me to carve out a shape with the final paints. Anyway I love showing off my weird photobashes so here's some in progress screenshots lol

The eponymous airport on the island of Gran Canaria was the main hub for travel in and out of the colonized African archipelago. That made it a logical target for the Fuerzas Armadas Guanches, the armed division of the MPAIAC, fighting for an end to Spanish colonial rule. That day, a man placed a bomb in a duffel bag inside the airport terminal. The group called in to alert the authorities, but the building wasn't quite evacuated in time, leading to one airport worker being injured in the explosion. Knowing that multiple bombs may have been placed, local authorities shut the airport down to do a thorough search. As the terrorists intended, traffic in and out of the island ceased, and the planes en route to Gran Canaria were diverted to the nearby island of Tenerife.

Los Rodeos Airport was well enough equipped for landings and takeoffs by the occasional large jet, but its capacity could not possibly keep up with the demand that day. Aircraft filled the small apron and spilled out into the taxiways as exhausted tourists disembarked and roamed the small terminal building. Just minutes away from their destination, the pilots had no idea how long it would take for the airport in Gran Canaria to reopen, and their duty times were slowly ticking away.

Limits on how long a pilot is allowed to work are pretty self explanatory. If you wouldn't drive to the convenience store at 3am on 2 hours of sleep from the previous night, you probably wouldn't want your pilot doing that either. However, the Netherlands had recently enacted a pretty questionable law which could charge pilots with a felony if they exceeded these limits, which was weighing hard on the mind of the very senior pilot behind the controls of a KLM 747.

Captain Jacob van Zanten was, by all accounts, an excellent pilot. He headed the airline's training program and spent more of his time mentoring other pilots in the simulator than flying passengers these days. This duty was almost a formality, as pilots must have a minimum number of real flight hours to maintain their licenses. The flight to Gran Canaria and back would fill this requirement for him, but with this extra delay and the frankly bullshit law that his home country had put in place, it could also land him in jail. He made a strategic decision to disembark the passengers and begin refuelling for the trip back while at Los Rodeos, to cut down on turnover times later.

This decision was certainly not appreciated by the pilots of a Pan Am 747 parked on the taxiway behind him. When the airport at Gran Canaria reopened and jets began streaming out, Captain Victor Grubbs on the Pan Am flight found himself trapped by the refuelling KLM. He and his First Officer actually climbed out of the plane to evaluate the distance on foot just in case they could barely maneuver around the other aircraft, but to no avail- they were meters short of the clearance needed on the small taxiways at Tenerife.

That day, the overworked ground controller was struggling to manage all of the unexpected traffic and sequence them for takeoff. Since the taxiways were already filled with parked aircraft, he had to instruct some to back-taxi down the whole length of the runway and turn around in order to take off. To make things worse, fog was rolling over the airport- at times there was okay visibility, but most of the time he couldn't see the planes he was directing. Without radar, he had to track them all using rudimentary flight strips and a mental map.

Once all the passengers had been wrangled back to the KLM, the controller instructed them to taxi to the end of the runway and into the takeoff position. In the meantime, he intended to have the waiting Pan Am taxi most of the way down the runway and exit onto taxiway three to wait for their chance.

As they taxied slowly down the runway engulfed in fog, the mood in the cockpit of the Pan Am was sour. They been waiting far longer than they needed, and now they were moving down an occupied runway while barely able to see the exits as they passed. When they spotted the exit to taxiway 3, they were puzzled- by their judgement, the steep acute angle they'd have to turn to enter it wasn't possible. Perhaps the controller had meant the third taxiway from their position, which would be taxiway four? Of course, he had not meant this- he had no radar to tell where the Pan Am flight was. He simply was not familiar enough with the 747 to know it could not accomodate such a tight turn.

While the Pan Am crawled down the runway, the KLM had made its turn and the pilots were rushing through the takeoff checklist. In fact, Captain van Zanten increased the throttles and was reminded they had yet to recieve clearance. Of course. He instructed the First Officer to ask for it now.

At this point in the story, the exact wordings start to become very, very important. Pay attention.

KLM F/O: "The KLM four eight zero five is now ready for take-off and we are waiting for our ATC clearance."

TOWER: "KLM eight seven zero five you are cleared to the Papa beacon, climb to and maintain flight level nine zero, right turn after takeoff, proceed with heading four zero until intercepting the three two five radial from Las Palmas VOR."

...did you catch that? The mental models have started diverging. "ATC clearance" is the route the plane is cleared to follow after getting airborne, but it is not takeoff clearance. However, these clearances are often provided at the same time. Because the controller used the word "takeoff" in his route instructions, the pilots on board the KLM flight mistakenly believed he was providing takeoff clearance. This may seem like a difficult mistake to make, but after a long work day with an unplanned stopover and with the threat of jail time or a logistical nightmare if you delay, it's a mistake you might make too.

After reading back the clearance, the KLM First Officer says a line that nobody can quite decipher- either "We are at takeoff" or "We are, uh, taking off." Whatever he said, this raised the attention of both the controller and the Pan Am crew, who each sought to clear up the confusion.

TOWER: "Okay.... Stand by for takeoff, I will call you."

PAN AM F/O: "And we're still taxiing down the runway, the clipper one seven three six."

However, a tragic coincidence sealed their fate. Since the controller hesitated slightly after saying "okay," the Pan Am First Officer transmitted his message before the controller was finished. On traditional radio systems, if you are transmitting, you can't hear any other transmissions, so neither party realized they had been speaking at the same time. In the cockpit of the KLM, already starting the roll, the crew heard this:

TOWER: "Okay."

[Unintelligible static]

PAN AM F/O: "Clipper one seven three six."

There was one last chance to realize their mistake, although by this point it may not have saved them.

TOWER: "Ah, Papa Alpha one seven three six, report the runway clear."

PAN AM F/O: "Okay, we'll report when clear."

While the Pan Am pilots complained about the KLM's sudden rush after they'd held up the line so long, the flight engineer on the KLM posed a question in Dutch- is he not clear then, that Pan American? Captain van Zanten reassured him in a way the transcript deacribes as "emphatic."

When the Pan Am pilots caught sight of the lights through the fog, they tried to taxi off the runway into the grass to no avail. Meanwhile, spotting the Pan Am, Captain van Zanten made the fateful (yet possibly correct) decision to attempt to take off early. The tail struck the runway and the engine smashed into the Pan Am's upper deck, leading the damaged KLM to stall and slam back into the runway, where the fuel exploded. While much of the Pan Am was damaged and engulfed by flames, 61 survivors managed to escape. The decision to attempt a takeoff may have killed the KLM crew, but if they hadn't, there may have been no survivors.

This is where our story leaves the realm of objective fact and becomes one of conjecture. After all, 583 people were now dead. Whose fault was it?

The punitive mindset pervades our modern world. We are animals, after all, and our advancement has only given us more complex ways to justify our love of cruelty. Hell, our instinctive need to punish taboo or anti-social behaviours probably kept us alive in the days when taking the proverbial last slice of pizza meant risking the lives of your whole band of hunter gatherers. We demand punishment be doled out, regardless of intention.

Captain van Zanten, the arrogant pilot who took off without clearance, is dead. He likely died instantly, never realizing what his mistake was. Or maybe in the last moments he realized his engineer had been right, and he knew exactly what he had done to cause his own horrid, painful death. Is that justice?

In the aftermath, Spain's official investigation placed the blame squarely on the KLM crew. They took off without clearance. While the Dutch investigators agreed, they argued that the lack of radar and the controller's confusing transmissions were what led to the error. History has proven that they were correct. Controllers are now never allowed to use the word 'takeoff' in transmissions unless it is for a takeoff clearance. Confirmation bias, the way we seek information that confirms our mental model while unconsciously discarding evidence against it, is now far better understood.

Still, load up any video on Tenerife and it is a flip of a coin whether the presenter understands this. Whether Captain van Zanten was a reckless and controlling man who broke the rules on purpose or a frazzled pilot trying to get home during an incredibly stressful shift is in the eye of the beholder, because it is ultimately not a question about him at all. It's a question about how you make sense of blame.

Personally, I'm a safety enthusiast (and a hedonist, in the classical sense). I believe in whatever maximizes safety. So here's my argument to you.

Blaming the individual who makes a mistake, absent any evidence it was intentional, is not a safe mindset. A punitive approach to mistakes causes people to feel ashamed of them and fear retribution. A mistake that is not admitted early can snowball. Think about it... if Captain van Zanten had been taught the value of questioning his decisions, listening to his subordinates, and admitting to his mistakes, would he have been a little less likely to take off the brakes that day?

What makes safety so intriguing to me is its utopian aims. That every accident can be learned from, every death can be prevented, and every mistake shared openly without shame can be a tragedy avoided. It's not always the perfect lens to view the world through- I can agree that punitive justice feels pretty good when negligence leads to horrible suffering. But sometimes being human is about setting aside our emotions and doing not what feels right, but what works.