Cockpit Recordings Capture Final Fateful 8 Minutes

On March 27, 1977, on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, two 747 jumbo jets collided on a fog-shrouded runway, killing 583 people in what is still the deadliest crash in aviation history. Because the actions of both the flight crews of the two aircraft and Los Rodeos Airport's air traffic controllers directly contributed to the disaster, the log of conversations between the two planes and the tower in the minutes leading up to the collision was investigators' key tool for ultimately piecing together the events. Here, read an annotated transcript of the two planes' communications with the tower.