On Wed, 26 Nov 2003 at 12:17:22 in message
, Matthew Waugh
wrote:

To go back to the original crash - at the time the airport was littered with
large airliners because the weather in Europe was horrible and they'd all
landed there to wait it out. So they were back-taxing aircraft on the active
runway because the taxi-ways were full.

Weather varies considerably across Europe so it is rare for the weather
in Europe to be horrible everywhere. The weather was a vital, but local
factor in that accident. Whether the Canary islands are even part of
Europe is debatable. Unusually there was cloud and fog in Tenerife.

Leaving your generalisation aside the cause of all the congestion was
that a small bomb had gone off in the passenger terminal at Las Palmas.
There had been a 15 minute warning of that but then there was then a
second warning about another bomb. There was little option but to close
the airport while a big search was conducted. The many flights
approaching at that time had to be diverted and they were sent to Los
Rodeos, the other Canary Islands international airport, 50 miles away on
the island of Tenerife. It had a single runway and had neither taxi ways
nor parking to handle double its normal daily traffic. The apron was
fully occupied when the KLM 747 arrived. Then the Pan Am 747 arrived.

That is just the starting point for what happened. I am not going
through all the rest of it - it is well documented but please get the
basics roughly correct.
--
David CL Francis