Free I know you got soul: machines with that certain something by Jeremy Clarkson

to pull off on the first taxiway – impossible since it was a logjam of parked planes. This time the controller was clear: ‘The third one, sir. One, two, three. Third one.’
    By the time the confusion was cleared up the Americans, still trundling in the pea-souper towards the stationary KLM plane, had no idea how many taxiway turn-off points they’d passed. The black box recorded the captain and first officer trying to decide which was their turn-off. In the event they had missed the third taxiway and were heading for the fourth, all the while getting nearer and nearer to van Zanten.
    He, in the meantime, had turned his planearound and was desperate to get going. So desperate, in fact, that he immediately opened the taps on the four engines. First Officer Klaus Meurs plainly sensed this was premature, since he was recorded saying, ‘Wait. We don’t have clearance.’
    Van Zanten immediately applied the brakes and asked his first officer to get on the radio and get clearance. This is what the air traffic controller said: ‘KL4805. You are cleared to the Papa beacon. Climb to and maintain Flight Level 90. Right turn after take-off. Proceed with heading 040 until intercepting the 325 radial from Las Palmas VOR.’
    These instructions were directions for after the plane had taken off. At no point did the controller actually say they were cleared to go. But van Zanten didn’t realise that and released the brakes.
    As the plane began to move, towards the unseen Pan Am Jumbo, his first officer repeated the message, as is customary. ‘Roger, sir, we are cleared to the Papa beacon, Flight Level 90 until intercepting the 325. We’re now at take-off.’
    And again there was confusion. The controller took ‘we’re now at take-off’ to mean that they were at the take-off position, not that they wereactually accelerating at full tilt down the runway towards the Clipper Victor.
    On board the Dutch jet were 14 crew and 234 passengers, including 48 children and 3 babies. On board the Pan Am jet there were 16 crew and 396 passengers. That’s a total of 660 people. And they were on a collision course.
    As the KLM jet picked up speed its flight officer, Willem Schreuder, heard the tower ask the Pan Am crew to report when they’d cleared the runway.
    Assuming, incorrectly, that his captain had heard this too, he said, ‘Did he not clear the runway then?’
    The reply sealed everyone’s fate. ‘Oh yes,’ said van Zanten.
    On board the Pan Am plane the first officer was the first to see the KLM jet bearing down on them. ‘There he is,’ he shouted. ‘Look at him. Goddam. That son of a bitch is coming. Get off. Get off. Get off.’
    Captain Grubbs was trying. He slammed the throttles wide open but it was too late. At the last moment van Zanten had spotted the Clipper and had tried to get airborne. He made it too but not quite enough; the bottom of his plane hit theroof of the American jet. It burst into flames and smashed back into the runway. Everyone on board was killed instantly.
    Aboard the Clipper the first officer reached up after the impact to shut down the howling engines, but the roof on which the switches were located had gone. So too had most of his passengers, in the initial explosion. But miraculously 70 people were pulled out alive, including all the crew of the flight deck.
    The total death toll, after nine had died in hospital, was 583, making this the worst accident in the 100-year history of aviation. And therein lies the biggest problem with the 747. When one of them goes down the loss of life is always so horrific no one gives a stuff about the plane itself.
    Happily, however, very few are lost. Between 1970 and 2000 1,000 Jumbos were wheeled out of Boeing’s factory and only 28 have been written off in accidents.
    Seven of those accidents happened on the ground while the plane was being manoeuvred, four were down to terrorists, one was destroyed by shelling in the first Gulf War and one was shot down in