1972 Tenerife Spantax Convair CV-990 crash

On December 3, 1972, a Convair CV-990 Coronado charter flight operated by Spantax from Tenerife to Munich with 148 passengers and 7 crew crashed while taking off from Tenerife-Norte Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, killing all 155 passengers and crew on board. Many of the passengers were French tourists heading on a tour of Germany.

Accident

The flight was chartered by the Landesverband Bayerischer Omnibusunternehmer, a community of Bavarian bus company owners. In command was Captain Daniel Núñez Ronda, a 32-year-old former Spanish Air Force pilot, who was accompanied by 36-year-old First Officer Francisco Javier Saavedra and 30-year-old Flight Engineer José Alberto Sanz. Conditions that morning were IFR with a reported visibility of about only 500 ft. The flight was cleared for take-off on runway 30 at 6:45 UTC. At 300 ft the aircraft entered a steep bank and soon began to descend. The left wing hit the ground about 325 m past the end of the runway, rupturing a fuel tank before the rest of the fuselage touched down. A massive explosion of the almost fully fueled tanks followed. All 155 people aboard were killed upon impact.

At the time, the accident was the deadliest aircraft crash on the island of Tenerife and the deadliest to take place in Spain until surpassed by the collision of two Boeing 747 aircraft at the same airport five years later. It was the eighth hull loss and deadliest accident involving a Convair 990 Coronado.