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Self-driving cars have earned headlines as a potential threat to the auto industry, but a more imminent threat may be millennial shoppers who have little tolerance for old-school buying experiences.My wife and I have been shopping for a new car recently, and I feel like we've taken a trip back in time. Salespeople can't quote a price without running to the manager. We keep getting low-balled on the trade-in. Each model comes with a seemingly random assortment of features, and few dealers have exactly the configuration we want.It's a ridiculous process that seems designed to confuse people. At the root of the problem is that dealers are competing against each other to sell the same product, ensuring that no two people will pay the same price for the same car. It's as if all the Apple Stores in the region were selling the iPhone 10 at different prices.The result is a chaotic shopping experience that not only makes individual dealerships look bad, it reflects negatively on the car brands themselves. (While there are some new sales models out there, including Carvana and Roadster, these businesses ironically add additional middlemen to the process, creating more distance from car brands.)The generation that has grown up with Apple and Amazon has little patience for this kind of buying experience, so the auto industry--like many others--needs a fresh approach. Here are three important factors to remember if you to want to attract and keep millennial customers.1. Buyers value transparency and simplicity.Today's buyers do not like gimmicks; they want to deal with a brand that is upfront. In recent discussion that I had with Nicholas Rellas, founder of the fast-growing alcohol delivery service Drizly, he shared that price transparency was more important to his buyers than convenience.Remember what happened to the mattress industry? The top brands applied different names to identical products, leveraged resellers to capitalize on this lack of transparency, and made big bucks. Then, almost overnight, the industry was disrupted by folks like Casper and Helix Sleep offering direct-to-consumer products without the middlemen. The newcomers made shopping simple and price comparison easy, transforming the industry and leading to dark days for traditional mattress retailers.2. Buyers want a fair and consistent price--even if it's not the lowest.Amazon does not always have the lowest price, but most people I know don't even look elsewhere when they buy online. They trust that Amazon will not overcharge them, and they value the convenience, familiarity, customer service and benefits that come with Amazon Prime.In the auto industry, Saturn pioneered fixed pricing but suffered because it offered a low-quality product. Now electric car company Tesla might finally be getting it right. The company has avoided third-party dealers and adopted a fixed pricing model for each car based on its specifications; there is no haggling. For the company's soon-to-be-released Model 3, 400,000 customers put down $1,000 ($400 million in deposits) to reserve cars almost two years in advance of the first shipment. This kind of advance buying is unheard-of in the auto industry. Clearly customers like both the product and the pricing model.In other industries, many companies match low prices offered by their competitors. This policy reassures customers they are getting the best deal. I haven't seen price-matching on offer at any of the car dealerships I've visited, but maybe someone should try it.3. Millennials prefer to ditch the middlemen.Salespeople and dealers today often know less about products than their customers do. The model car we are considering was completely redesigned for 2018, yet one salesperson told my wife that there were no changes this year. Unless salespeople add value with in-depth knowledge about their products, millennials aren't going to want to buy through them. Since online research is easy to do, businesses have to be ready to market to very savvy buyers.Today's consumer products are bought, not sold. That means companies have to make it easy for customers to find what they want at the best price point without a lot of hassles. Those who forget this critical feature of marketing to millennials may also soon find themselves disrupted right out of business.This piece was originally published on Inc.Robert Glazer is the founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners and the author of the international bestselling book Performance Partnerships. Join 35,000 global leaders who follow his inspirational weekly Friday Forward, invite him to speak, or follow him on Twitter.

Question: What are some good sci-fi/fantasy books one must read?No one is under compulsion to read anything, so none of these are books that “one must read.” It’s a big buffet, and you get to gorge at every table, or pick something here and there, or just settle for a glass of water and say you’re on a strict reading diet….For a serious discussion of the hazards of such recommendations, you can look at this essay I wrote: On Book RecommendationsBut I’m going to give a personal list that is more or less chronological that goes from the the early years of the century through the ‘80s. I’ll leave the time since then to other people — but I’m fairly familiar with the fiction from the period I’m going to list, so I’m not reluctant to throw out a few possibilities. I will list a few from the ‘90s, but I won’t be very comprehensive.I’m going to constrain the list to novels mostly; I will point out novellas or significant collections of short stories where that is the best representation of a particular writer’s work. The ’40s and ’50s were not primarily a time for sf novels because of the practicalities of publication. Even so, there are novels here and there, often published in installments as semi-independent-but-linked stories. This inevitably omits some major work from the period if we restrict ourselves purely to novels — people like Kuttner and C. L. Moore and Cordwainer Smith and Bradbury were primarily short-story writers. And there is the case of Poul Anderson, whose best work is clearly in the novella category from the ’50s through the ‘70s, but who wrote some very interesting novels too. Of necessity, I’m going to list these people’s novellas if I think of them, because otherwise their achievement is distorted.Note that the list starts at 1890. There are earlier writers whose work plays on the borderlands of fantasy and sometimes cross over. We could point to E. T. A. Hoffmann, Mary Shelley, Sheridan Le Fanu, William Beckford, and George Meredith — but I see those writers as precursors who were working in a literary environment that did not see fantasy as something separate from normal literature.1890 - 1940sIsaac Asimov, The Foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). Some of this work wasn’t published until the ’50s but it was mostly constructed from stories he wrote in the ‘40s.Fredric Brown, What Mad Universe, “Arena,” “The Star Mouse”James Branch Cabell, Jurgen, The Cream of the Jest, Figures of Earth, The Music from Behind the Moon, The Silver Stallion, Something about Eve, The Way of EcbanJohn W. Campbell, Who Goes There?, “Twilight”Arthur C. Clarke, Against the Fall of NightL. Sprague De Camp, Lest Darkness Fall, With Fletcher Pratt: The Roaring Trumpet, The Mathematics of Magic, The Castle of IronLord Dunsany, The King of Elfland’s Daughter, The Book of Wonder, The Gods of PeganaE. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in MemisonE. M. Forster, The Machine StopsRobert Graves, Seven Days in New Crete (a.k.a., Watch the North Wind Rise)Robert Heinlein, Revolt in 2100, The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Green Hills of Earth, Methuselah’s Children, Beyond this Horizon, Waldo and Magic, Inc. Heinlein edited the original version of Methuselah’s Children for publication in 1958. The book first appeared serially in 1941.William Hope Hodgson, The House on the Borderland, The Night Land.Aldous Huxley, Brave New WorldHenry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, The Dark World, The Mask of Circe, “Mimsy Were the Borogoves,” “Vintage Season.” C. L. Moore solo: “No Woman Born,” Jirel of Joiry (collection of stories written 1934 - 1939)David Lindsay, A Voyage to ArcturusFritz Leiber, Gather Darkness, Destiny Times Three, and Conjure Wife, “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes,” “Sanity”A. Merritt, The Dwellers in the Mirage,The Ship of Ishtar, The Face in the AbyssJohn Myers Myers, The Harp and the Blade, SilverlockGustav Meyrink, The GolemMervyn Peake, Titus GroanClifford Simak, City (a paste-up novel constructed from stories that were mostly published in the 1940s. The final story of the 1952 edtion was written in ‘51. The 1980 edition concludes with ANOTHER story in the series that he wrote in ‘73, called “Epilog”).William M. Sloane, The Edge of Running WaterOlaf Stapledon, Odd John, Last and First Men, Star MakerTheodore Sturgeon, “Microcosmic God,” “Shottle Bop,” “Bianca’s Hands,” “Thunder and Roses,” “It Wasn’t Syzygy,” “Maturity”A. E. Van Vogt, Slan, The World of Null-A, The Weapon Shops of Isher, “Black Destroyer”H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, The Wonderful Visit, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, When the Sleeper Wakes, Men Like GodsJack Williamson, Darker Than You Think1950sPoul Anderson, Brainwave, The Broken Sword, Three Hearts and Three Lions (original novella 1953), Operation Chaos (all but the last novella in this fix-up novel were written in the ‘50s). Novella: “The Longest Voyage,” “Call Me Joe”Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, “The Martian Way”Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man and Tyger! Tyger! (The Stars my Destination)James Blish, A Case of Conscience, Earthman, Come Home, They Shall Have Stars, The Triumph of Time. “There Shall Be No Darkness,” “Surface Tension,” “Beep,” “Common Time”Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Dandelion WineFredric Brown, Martians, Go Home!, The Lights in the Sky Are StarsAlgis Budrys, “Nobody Bothers Gus”Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End, Tales of the White HartCharles Harness, The Paradox Men, The RoseRobert Heinlein, Double Star, Citizen of the GalaxyZenna Henderson, “Captivity”Damon Knight, Hell’s PavementC. M. Kornbluth and Frederic Pohl, The Space Merchants, Gladiator at LawC. M. Kornbluth, The Syndic, “The Marching Morons”Fritz Leiber, You’re All Alone, The Green Millennium, The Big Time, “Coming Attraction,” “Try and Change the Past,” “Space-Time for Springers”Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for LeibowitzEdgar Pangborn, A Mirror for ObserversMervyn Peake, Gormenghast, Titus Alone, Boy in DarknessFrederic Pohl, “The Midas Plague”Wilmar Shiras, In HidingCordwainer Smith, “Scanners Live in Vain,” “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” “When the People Fell,”Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human, The Dreaming Jewels, “The World Well Lost,” “A Saucer of Loneliness,” “Mr Costello, Hero,” “The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff,” “The Skills of Xanadu,” “The Silken-Swift”Jack Vance, The Dying Earth, To Live Forever, Big PlanetKurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of TitanJohn Wyndham, The Crysalids1960sBrian Aldiss, Hothouse, Greybeard, Barefoot in the HeadPoul Anderson, The High Crusade, The Corridors of Time, Ensign Flandry, The Rebel Worlds, A Circus of Hells. Stories: “No Truce With Kings,” “The Sharing of Flesh.”J. G. Ballard, The Crystal World, The Burning World, The Drowned World, The Wind from Nowhere, Vermillion SandsPeter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place, The Last UnicornJames Blish, Black Easter, A Torrent of Faces (with Norman L. Knight), “How Beautiful With Banners”Fredric Brown, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” Nightmares and GeezenstacksJohn Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Whole ManAlgis Budrys, Rogue MoonAnthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed, A Clockwork OrangeSamuel R. Delany, Babel-17, The Einstein Intersection, Nova, The Fall of the Towers, “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones,” “The Star Pit,” “Driftglass,” “Aye, and Gomorrah”Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time Slip, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Three Stigmata of Palmer EldritchThomas M. Disch, The Genocides, Echo Round His Bones, The Puppies of Terra, Camp Concentration, “Casablanca,” “The Roaches,” “Descending,” “The Number You Have Reached,” “Linda and Daniel and Spike”Harlan Ellison, Paingod and other Delusions, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the WorldRobert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange LandZenna Henderson, The Anything BoxFrank Herbert, DuneLangdon Jones, The Eye of the Lens (story collection), containing his best stories from the ‘60s, including “The Eye of the Lens,” “The Garden of Delights,” and the hilarious “Symphony No. 6 in C Minor 'The Tragic' by Ludwig van Beethoven II”Daniel Keyes, Flowers for AlgernonDamon Knight, A is for Anything, “Masks”R. A. Lafferty, Past Master, Nine Hundred Grandmothers (story collection from ‘60s, publish 1970)Ursula K. LeGuin, Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusion, The Left Hand of Darkness, A Wizard of EarthseaFritz Leiber, The Silver Eggheads, The Wanderer, A Spectre is Haunting Texas, Swords in the Mist, Swords Against Wizardry, The Swords of Lankhmar, “Gonna Roll the Bones,” “Ship of Shadows” (novella)Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man, The Final Programme, The Ice SchoonerLarry Niven, Neutron Star, World of Ptavvs, A Gift from Earth, “Not Long Before the End”Edgar Pangborn, Davy, The Judgment of EveFrederik Pohl, Drunkard’s Walk, A Plague of Pythons, “Day Million”Keith Roberts, Pavane, “Coranda”James Schmitz, The Witches of KarresRobert Silverberg, Thorns, Up the Line, The Masks of Time, The Man in the Maze, Nightwings, Downward to the Earth, To Open the Sky, novella: Hawksbill StationClifford Simak, Way Station, The Goblin ReservationCordwainer Smith, Norstrilia, “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard,” “The Ballad of Lost C’mell,” “Think Blue, Count Two,” “The Dead Lady of Clown Town.”Norman Spinrad, Bug Jack Barron, The Men in the Jungle (I thought this a period piece, and it’s not the best-written of Spinrad’s work, but the depiction of the rise of the protagonist has a certain resonance even today when compared against a rabble-rousing politician’s behavior).William Tenn, Of Men and MonstersJack Vance, The Dragon Masters, The Last Castle, The Moon Moth (novellas)Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-5Kate Wilhelm, “The Planners”Roger Zelazny, This Immortal (a.k.a., And Call Me Conrad…), Lord of Light, The Dream Master (expansion of the novella “He Who Shapes”), Creatures of Light and Darkness, Nine Princes in Amber, Isle of the Dead, Damnation Alley, “For a Breath I Tarry,” “He Who Shapes,” “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” “This Moment of the Storm”1970sBrian Aldiss, Frankenstein UnboundPoul Anderson, Tau Zero, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, Mirkheim, A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows. Novellas: “Goat Song,” “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” “The Visitor”J. G. Ballard, Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition, Concrete Island, High RiseJames Blish, The Day After Judgement, The Quincunx of Time, “A Style of Treason”Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Spell Sword, The Forbidden Tower, The Heritage of HasturJohn Brunner, The Sheep Look Up, The Shockwave Rider, The Complete Traveler in BlackArthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous with RamaSamuel R. Delany, DhalgrenPhilip K. Dick, A Scanner DarklyThomas M. Disch, On Wings of Song, “The Asian Shore,” 334 — which contains the masterful stories “Angoulême,” “Bodies,” and “Emancipation”Harlan Ellison, Approaching Oblivion, Deathbird Stories, Strange WineJoe Haldeman, The Forever WarM. John Harrison, The Pastel CityUrsula K. LeGuin, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, The Farthest Shore, The Word for World is Forest, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (short story collection)Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness, “Belsen Express”Richard Lupoff, Space War BluesBarry Malzberg, Beyond Apollo, Guernica Night, Scop, Herovitt’s World, The Destruction of the Temple, The Best of Barry MalzbergVonda N. McIntyre, “Of Mist, Grass, and Sand,” DreamsnakeMichael Moorcock, The Condition of Muzak, Breakfast in the Ruins, An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, The End of All Songs, GlorianaLarry Niven, Protector, The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton, A World out of Time, Ringworld, “Inconstant Moon,” “The Borderland of Sol,” “What Good Is a Glass Dagger?”, “The Fourth Profession,” The Magic Goes AwayEdgar Pangborn, The Company of Glory, And Still I Persist in Wondering (stories)Frederick Pohl, Man Plus, Gateway, “The Gold at the Starbow’s End.”Keith Roberts, The Chalk Giants, The Grain KingsRobert Silverberg, Dying Inside, The World Inside, The Second Trip, A Time of Changes, The Tower of Glass, The Book of Skulls, Born With the Dead (a book of 3 novellas)Clifford Simak, “The Thing in the Stone”Norman Spinrad, The Iron Dream, Riding the TorchJames Tiptree, Jr., Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home, Warm Worlds and Otherwise, Star Songs of an Old Primate (collections of her stories)John Varley, The Persistence of Vision (story collection)Kate Wilhelm, The Abyss, Margaret and I, The Infinity Box, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Somerset DreamsGene Wolfe, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, The Island of Doctor Death and Other StoriesRoger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon, The Sign of the Unicorn, The Hand of Oberon, The Courts of Chaos, Doorways in the Sand, Jack of Shadows, Bridge of Ashes, “The Last Defender of Camelot”1980sIain M. Banks, Consider Phlebas, The Player of GamesJohn Brunner, The Crucible of TimePhilip K. Dick, ValisThomas M. Disch, Fundamental Disch, The Man Who Had No Idea, The M.D.: A Horror StoryGeorge Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails, A Fire in the SunHarlan Ellison, Shatterday, Stalking the Nightmare, Angry CandyWilliam Gibson, Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Count ZeroM. John Harrison, Viriconium Nights, In ViriconiumTanith Lee, Kill the DeadBarry Malzberg, The Remaking of Sigmund FreudMichael Moorcock, Mother LondonFrederick Pohl, Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, Heechee RendezvousTerry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters, Pyramids, Guards! Guards! (These are all the Pratchett novels I have read)Bruce Sterling, Islands in the NetRobert Silverberg, “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Gilgamesh in the Outback,” “Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another”James Tiptree, Jr., Out of the EverywhereGene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, The Citadel of the Autarch, Soldier of the MistRoger Zelazny, Eye of Cat, The Trumps of Doom,Blood of Amber, Sign of Chaos,Knight of Shadows, “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai,” “Unicorn Variation,” “The Horses of Lir”1990sIain M. Banks, Use of Weapons, Feersum EndjinnThomas M. Disch, The PriestGeorge Alec Effinger, The Exile Kiss; Maureen Birbaum, Barbarian SwordpersonHarlan Ellison, Mind Fields, SlippageNeil Gaiman, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Neverwhere, StardustWilliam Gibson, Virtual Light, IdoruWilliam Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference EngineM. John Harrison, The Course of the Heart, Things That Never Happen (story collection)Roger Zelazny, Prince of Chaos, A Night in the Lonesome October2000sThomas M. Disch, The Word of God, The Wall of AmericaM. John Harrison, Light, Nova SwingNeil Gaiman, American GodsMarie Jakober, The Black Chalice

Exactly 41 years ago, at Tenerife-North Airport (formerly Los Rodeos), two Boeing 747s - one belonging to KLM, the other to Pan Am - collided on a foggy runway. Five hundred and eighty-three people were killed in what remains the biggest air disaster in history. In this extract from Cockpit Confidential, the pilot Patrick Smith outlines what went wrong:The magnitude of the accident speaks for itself, but what makes it particularly unforgettable is the startling set of ironies and coincidences that preceded it. Indeed, most airplane crashes result not from a single error or failure, but from a chain of improbable errors and failures, together with a stroke or two of really bad luck. Never was this illustrated more calamitously - almost to the point of absurdity - than on that Sunday afternoon 40 years ago.In 1977, in only its eighth year of service, the Boeing 747 was already the biggest, the most influential, and possibly the most glamorous commercial jetliner ever built. For just those reasons, it was hard not to imagine what a story it would be - and how much carnage might result - should two of these behemoths ever hit each other. Really, though, what were the chances of that: a Hollywood script if ever there was one.Imagine we’re there:Most airplane crashes result from a chain of improbable errors and failuresBoth of the 747s at Tenerife are charters. Pan Am has come from Los Angeles, after a stopover in New York, KLM from its home base in Amsterdam. As it happens, neither plane is supposed to be on Tenerife. They were scheduled to land at Las Palmas, on the nearby island of Gran Canaria, where many of the passengers were on their way to meet cruise ships. After a bomb planted by Canary Island separatists exploded in the Las Palmas airport flower shop, they diverted to Los Rodeos, along with several other flights, arriving around 2:00 p.m.Pan Am, the most storied franchise in the history of aviation, requires little introduction CREDIT: © ZUMA PRESS INC / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO/ZUMA PRESS INC / ALAMY STOCK PHOTOThe Pan Am aircraft, registered N736PA, is no stranger to notoriety. In January 1970, this very same plane completed the inaugural commercial voyage of a 747, between New York’s Kennedy airport and London Heathrow. Somewhere on its nose is the dent from a champagne bottle. White with a blue window stripe, it wears the name Clipper Victor along the forward fuselage. The KLM 747, also blue and white, is named the Rhine.Let’s not forget the airlines themselves: Pan Am, the most storied franchise in the history of aviation, requires little introduction. KLM, for its part, is the oldest continuously operating airline in the world, founded in 1919 and highly regarded for its safety and punctuality.The KLM captain, Jacob Van Zanten, whose errant takeoff roll will soon kill nearly 600 people, including himself, is the airline’s top 747 instructor pilot and a KLM celebrity. If passengers recognize him, it’s because his confident, square-jawed visage stares out from KLM’s magazine ads. Later, when KLM executives first get word of the crash, they will attempt to contact Van Zanten in hopes of sending him to Tenerife to aid the investigation team.The normally lazy Los Rodeos is packed with diverted flights. The Rhine and Clipper Victor sit adjacent to each other at the southeast corner of the apron, their wingtips almost touching. Finally at around four o’clock, Las Palmas begins accepting traffic again. Pan Am is quickly ready for departure, but the lack of room and the angle at which the jets face each other requires that KLM begin to taxi first.The weather is fine until just before the accident, and if not for KLM requesting extra fuel at the last minute, both would be on their way sooner. During the delay, a heavy blanket of fog swoops down from the hills and envelopes the airport. That fuel also means extra weight, affecting how quickly the 747 is able to become airborne. For reasons you’ll see in a moment, that will be critical.Neither plane was supposed to be on Tenerife CREDIT: STFBecause of the tarmac congestion, the normal route to runway 30 is blocked. Departing planes will need to taxi down on the runway itself. Reaching the end, they’ll make a 180-degree turn before taking off in the opposite direction. This procedure, rare at commercial airports, is called a “back-taxi.” At Tenerife in ’77, it will put two 747s on the same runway at the same time, invisible not only to each other, but also to the control tower. The airport has no ground tracking radar.KLM taxis ahead and onto the runway, with the Pan Am Clipper ambling several hundred yards behind. Captain Van Zanten will steer to the end, turn around, then hold in position until authorized for takeoff. Pan Am’s instructions are to turn clear along a left-side taxiway to allow the other plane’s departure. Once safely off the runway, Pan Am will report so to the tower.KLM was the other airline involved in the accident CREDIT: GETTYUnable to differentiate the taxiways in the low visibility, the Pan Am pilots miss their assigned turnoff. Continuing to the next one is no big problem, but now they’re on the runway for several additional seconds.At the same time, having wheeled into position at the end, Van Zanten comes to a stop. His first officer, Klaas Meurs, takes the radio and receives the ATC route clearance. This is not a takeoff clearance, but rather a procedure outlining turns, altitudes, and frequencies for use once airborne. Normally it is received well prior to an aircraft taking the runway, but the pilots have been too busy with checklists and taxi instructions until now. They are tired, annoyed, and anxious to get going. The irritability in the pilots’ voices, Van Zanten’s in particular, has been duly noted by the control tower and other pilots.There are still a couple dominos yet to fall, but now the final act is in motion – literally. Because the route clearance comes where and when it does, it is mistaken for a takeoff clearance as well. First officer Meurs, sitting to Van Zanten’s right, acknowledges the altitudes, headings, and fixes, then finishes off with an unusual, somewhat hesitant phrase, backdropped by the sound of accelerating engines. “We are now, uh, at takeoff.”Van Zanten releases the brakes. “We gaan,” he is heard saying on the cockpit voice recorder. “Let’s go.” And with that, his mammoth machine begins barreling down the fog-shrouded runway, completely without permission.“At takeoff” is not standard phraseology among pilots. But it’s explicit enough to grab the attention of the Pan Am crew and the control tower. It’s hard for either party to believe KLM is actually moving, but both reach for their microphones to make sure.“And we’re still taxiing down the runway,” relays Bob Bragg, the Pan Am first officer.At the same instant, the tower radios a message to KLM. “Okay,” says the controller. “Stand by for takeoff. I will call you.”There is no reply. This silence is taken as a tacit, if not exactly proper, acknowledgment.Either of these transmissions would be, should be, enough to stop Van Zanten cold in his tracks. He still has time to discontinue the roll. The problem is, because they occur simultaneously, they overlap.Pilots and controllers communicate via two-way VHF radios. The process is similar to speaking over a walkie-talkie CREDIT: NIKOLAI SOROKIN - FOTOLIAPilots and controllers communicate via two-way VHF radios. The process is similar to speaking over a walkie-talkie: a person activates a microphone, speaks, then releases the button and waits for an acknowledgment. It differs from using a telephone, for example, as only one party can speak at a time, and has no idea what his message actually sounds like over the air. If two or more microphones are clicked at the same instant, the transmissions cancel each other out, delivering a noisy occlusion of static or a high-pitched squeal called a heterodyne. Rarely are heterodynes dangerous. But at Tenerife this is the last straw.Van Zanten hears only the word “okay,” followed by a five-second squeal. He keeps going.Ten seconds later there is one final exchange, clearly and maddeningly audible on the post-crash tapes. “Report when runway clear,” the tower says to Pan Am.“We’ll report when we’re clear,” acknowledges Bob Bragg.Focused on the takeoff, Van Zanten and his first officer apparently miss this. But the second officer, sitting behind them, does not. Alarmed, with their plane now racing forward at a hundred knots, he leans forward. “Is he not clear?” he asks. “That Pan American?”“Oh, yes,” Van Zanten answers emphatically.In the Pan Am cockpit, nose-to-nose with the still unseen, rapidly approaching interloper, there’s a growing sense that something isn’t right. “Let’s get the f*** out of here,” Captain Victor Grubbs says nervously.A few moments later, the lights of the KLM 747 emerge out of the grayness, dead ahead, 2,000 feet away and closing fast.“There he is!” cries Grubbs, shoving the thrust levers to full power. “Look at him! Goddamn, that son of a bitch is coming!” He yanks the plane’s steering tiller, turning left as hard as he can, toward the grass at the edge of the runway.“Get off! Get off! Get off!” shouts Bob Bragg.Van Zanten sees them, but it’s too late. Attempting to leapfrog, he pulls back on the elevators, dragging his tail along the pavement for 70 feet in a hail of sparks. He almost makes it, but just as his plane breaks ground, its undercarriage and engines slice into the ceiling of the Victor, instantly demolishing its midsection and setting off a series of explosions.This 1977 Plane Crash Occurred Right on the RunwayWatch the full video of this crash by clicking the link above.Badly damaged, the Rhine settles back to the runway, skids hard on its belly for another thousand feet, and is consumed by fire before a single one of its 248 occupants can escape. Remarkably, of 396 passengers and crew aboard the Pan Am jumbo, 61 of them survived, including all five people in the cockpit: the three-man crew and two off-duty employees riding in the jumpseats.Image source:Google searchOver the past few years, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet two of those Pan Am survivors and hear their stories firsthand. I say that nonchalantly, but this is probably the closest I’ve ever come to meeting, for lack of a better term, a hero. Romanticising the fiery deaths of 583 people is akin to romanticising war, but there’s a certain mystique to the Tenerife disaster, a gravity so strong that shaking these survivors’ hands produced a feeling akin to that of a little kid meeting his favorite baseball player. These men were there, emerging from the wreckage of what, for some of us, stands as an event of mythic proportions.One of those survivors was Bob Bragg, the Pan Am first officer. I met him in Los Angeles, on the set of a documentary being made for the thirtieth anniversary of the accident. [Editor's note: Bob Bragg died in February 2017, after the original publication of this extract].It was Bragg who had uttered, “And we’re still taxiing down the runway” – seven easy words that should have saved the day, but instead were lost forever in the shriek and crackle of a blocked transmission. Just thinking about it gives me the chills.But there’s nothing dark about Bob Bragg – nothing that, on the surface, feels moored to the nightmare of ’77. He’s one of the most easygoing people you’ll ever meet. Gray-haired, bespectacled, and articulate, he looks and sounds like what he is: a retired airline pilot.God knows how many times he’s recounted the collision to others. He speaks about the accident with a practiced ease, in a voice of modest detachment, as if he’d been a spectator watching from afar. You can read all the transcripts, pore over the findings, watch the documentaries a hundred times over. Not until you sit with Bob Bragg and hear the unedited account, with all of the strange and astounding details that are normally missing, do you get a full sense of what happened. The basic story is well known; it’s the ancillaries that make it moving – and surreal:Bragg describes the initial impact as little more than “a bump and some shaking.” All five men in the cockpit, located at the forward end of the 747’s distinctive upper-deck hump, saw the KLM jet coming and had ducked. Knowing they’d been hit, Bragg instinctively reached upward in an effort to pull the “fire handles” – a set of four overhead-mounted levers that cut off the supply of fuel, air, electricity, and hydraulics running to and from the engines. His arm groped helplessly. When he looked up, the roof was gone.Turning around, he realised that the entire upper deck had been sheared off at a point just aft of his chair. He could see all the way aft to the tail, 200 feet behind him. The fuselage was shattered and burning. He and Captain Grubbs were alone in their seats, on a small, fully exposed perch 35 feet above the ground. Everything around them had been lifted away like a hat. The second officer and jumpseat stations, their occupants still strapped in, were hanging upside-down through what seconds earlier was the ceiling of the first class cabin.A memorial to the victims of the disaster, unveiled 10 years ago CREDIT: 2007 AFP/ROBIN UTRECHTThere was no option other than to jump. Bragg stood up and hurled himself over the side. He landed in the grass three stories below, feet--first, and miraculously suffered little more than an injured ankle. Grubbs followed, and he too was mostly unharmed. The others from the cockpit would unfasten their belts and shimmy down the sidewalls to the main cabin floor before similarly leaping to safety.Once on the ground, they faced a deafening roar. The plane had been pancaked into the grass, but because the cockpit control lines were severed, the engines were still running at full power. It took several moments before the motors began coming apart. Bragg remembers one of the engines’ huge forward turbofans detaching from its shaft, falling forward onto the ground with a thud.The fuselage was engulfed by fire. A number of passengers, most of them seated in forward portions of the cabin, had made it onto the craft’s left wing, and were standing at the leading edge, about 20 feet off the ground. Bragg ran over, encouraging them to jump. A few minutes later, the plane’s center fuel tank exploded, propelling a plume of flames and smoke a thousand feet into the sky.The airport’s ill-equipped rescue team, meanwhile, was over at the KLM site, the first wreckage they’d come to after learning there’d been an accident. They hadn’t yet realised that two planes were involved, one of them with survivors. Eventually, authorities opened the airport perimeter gates, urging anybody with a vehicle to drive toward the crash scene to help. Bob Bragg tells the cracked story of standing there in fog, surrounded by stunned and bleeding survivors, watching his plane burn, when suddenly a taxicab pulls up out of nowhere.Bragg returned to work a few months later. He eventually transferred to United when that carrier took over Pan Am’s Pacific routes in the late 1980s, and retired from the company as a 747 captain. He lives in Virginia with his wife, Dorothy. (Captain Grubbs has since passed away, as has second officer George Warns).During the documentary shoot, I travelled with Bob Bragg and the producers to the aircraft storage yards at Mojave, California, where he was interviewed alongside a mothballed 747, describing that incredible leap from the upper-deck.A day earlier, using a flight deck mock-up, director Phil Desjardins filmed a reenactment of the Tenerife collision, with a trio of actors sitting in as the KLM crew. To provide the actors with a helpful demo, it was suggested that Bob Bragg and I get inside the mock-up and run through a practice takeoff.Bragg took the captain’s seat, and I took the first officer’s seat. We read through a makeshift checklist and went through the motions of a simulated takeoff. That’s when I looked across, and all of a sudden it hit me: Here’s Bob Bragg, lone surviving pilot of Tenerife, sitting in a cockpit, pretending to be Jacob Van Zanten, whose error made the whole thing happen.Surely Bragg wanted no part of this dreary karma, and I hadn’t the courage to make note of it out loud – assuming it hadn’t already dawned on him. But I could barely keep the astonishment to myself. One more creepy irony in a story so full of them.Closing note: On the thirtieth anniversary of the crash, a memorial was dedicated overlooking the Tenerife airport, honoring those who perished there. The sculpture is in the shape of a helix. “A spiral staircase,” the builders describe it. “[…] a symbol of infinity.” Maybe, but I’m disappointed that the more obvious physical symbolism is ignored: early model 747s, including both of those in the crash, were well known for the set of spiral stairs connecting their main and upper decks. In the minds of millions of international travellers, that stairway is something of a civil aviation icon. How evocative and poetically appropriate for the memorial – even if the designers weren’t thinking that way.Source:The true story behind the deadliest air disaster of all time