Pilot's chilling final words on board flight from Manchester to Tenerife moments before largest loss of life in British aviation history

Daily Mail​

01-05-2025

The final words of the pilot flying a British aircraft that crashed into the Tenerife mountains and killed 146 is haunting people 45 years on.
The three pilots on board had years of experience under their belt but the rugged terrain and poor weather around the airport has made it a notoriously difficult place to land.
Only three years before the Dan-Air flight 1008 crashed, the worst aviation disaster in history tragically took place at Tenerife North when two planes collided on the run way, killing 583 people - partly due to poor visibility.
But in 1980, a change in wind direction forced Captain Arthur Whelan, 50, First Officer Michael Firth, 33, and Flight Engineer Raymond Carey, 33, to alter their landing plan and come in from the opposite side.
A tragic miscommunication in instructions then left the pilots asking one minute and six seconds before the crash 'b****y strange hold, isn't it?'.
As they dropped below the safe height of 14,500ft for the mountains, one pilot responded 'it doesn't parallel with the runway or anything'.
Having taken off from Manchester earlier that morning, the flight experienced no difficulty on the journey over the continent.
With winds typically coming across the Atlantic to the west, on April 25 1980 there was a change in direction, forcing the popular airliner to come in using the opposite runway.
There was not a single body that was found intact and most remains could not be identified
Another aircraft was ahead of the doomed flight and controller Justo Camin, 34, could see they were dangerously close to colliding mid-air.
He had to tell each flight how to fly along a predetermined route thanks to a lack of radar but improvised a holding pattern for the Dan Air flight.
Flight 1008 was told to enter a left-hand holding pattern and continue to make turns until the other flight was out of the way: 'Roger, the er, standard holding pattern overhead Foxtrot Papa is inbound heading one five zero, turn to the left, call you back shortly.'
But this is where Mr Camin's instructions proved fatal - he had meant to say 'turns' rather than 'turn' and had sent the plane onto a collision course.
So Captain Wheelan only made one small turn instead of the 150 degrees required for the holding pattern, heading straight for the mountain side invisible through the fog.
The recording from the cockpit shows the team begin to get uneasy and experts believe if they had asked the air controller to clarify the instructions there might have been time to veer themselves off their path to destruction.
Mr Camin, thinking the plane is over the sea, tells Flight 1008 that they can continue descending another 1,000ft, expecting them to slowly come in over the runway.
Captain Whelan says to his cop-pilot: 'I don't like that.'
He responds: 'They want us to keep going more round, don't they?'
Seconds later, the automatic ground alarm begins blaring 'pull up, pull up!'
Captain Whelan quickly turns into a sharp right instead of pulling up as co-pilot Firth suggests other routes after reading the charts.
Flight engineer Carey tells them 'let's get out of here' as Captain Whelan continues turning to the right as they continued to lose 300ft of altitude.
This was the last chance for the plane to save itself from its tragic fate.
The flight engineer begins shouting 'bank angle, bank angle!' before the CVR cuts out as the plan slams headlong into La Esperanza.
Debris was scattered across the mountain range and the tail section careened onwards for several hundred metres before plummeting into a ravine.
There was not a single body that was found intact and most remains could not be identified.
At 5,450ft, the plane was only 92ft from the summit and it obliterated instantly.
Spanish investigators tried to pin all the blame on the Dan-Air crew despite admitting fault with the controller's instructions while the Brits argued Mr Camin should have used a published holding pattern that kept flights at 7,000ft and realised earlier there was a problem with between the separation of the two planes.
They did acknowledge however that the Dan-Air crew should have queried the controllers instructions or requested clarification.
After the tragedy, a standardised procedure for all flight operations was established as well as the need for clear communication between pilots and air traffic controllers that is repeated.
Dan-Air, which has popular during the 60s and 70s, was able to recover from the disaster before it was taken over by British Airways in 1992.