Referring to the video on the previous page, which of the following factors do you think contributed to the Tenerife plane crash?
The only factors that didn't contribute to the Tenerife disaster were mechanical problems and staff incompetence.The Spanish Accident Board that investigated the crash found that human error on the part of the captain was the proximal cause of the accident. Captain Van Zanten took off without clearance, and ignored several warnings that he did not have clearance — this was the active failure in the Swiss cheese event. But this accident also laid bare many latent conditions that made the system unsafe: a lack of a clear communication protocol for take-off, stress from the urgency of the take-off, and a hierarchical culture that made it difficult for the co-pilot to speak up about the error. These conditions in combination allowed the active error to occur, and lead to disaster.