Tenerife – Las Palmas

On December 7, 1965 at 06:40 PM, Tenerife – Las Palmas experienced a crash involving Douglas C-47 Skytrain (DC-3), operated by Spantax, with the event recorded near Tenerife-Norte-Los Rodeos Canary Islands.

The flight was categorized as charter/taxi (non scheduled revenue flight) and the reported phase was takeoff (climb) at a airport (less than 10 km from airport) crash site.

32 people were known to be on board, 32 fatalities were recorded, 0 survivors were identified or estimated. This corresponds to an estimated fatality rate of 100.0%.

Crew on board: 4, crew fatalities: 4, passengers on board: 28, passenger fatalities: 28, other fatalities: 0.

The flight was a non-scheduled domestic flight from Tenerife to Las Palmas. It took off from runway 30 at Tenerife Airport with an IFR flight plan at 1830 hours and disappeared from the view of the tower controller in low cloud about 500 m before the end of the runway. According to the tower controller, the pilot acknowledged the last instructions from the tower two minutes after takeoff and did not re-establish contact afterwards. The aircraft was not seen again until a few moments before the accident which was presumed to have occurred between 1834 and 1840 hours according to witnesses. It was later determined that the airplane went into a dive and crashed few km from the airfield, killing all 32 occupants, most of them Scandinavian tourists.

Aircraft reference details include registration EC-ARZ, MSN 13474, year of manufacture 1944.

Geospatial coordinates for this crash are approximately 28.4875°, -16.3460°.