At first the afternoon was beautiful. Passengers on KLM Flight 4805 and Pan American Flight 1736 were looking forward to their Canary Island vacations. Both Boeing 747s would land at Las Palmas.
But terrorists had planted bombs in the Las Palmas airport. One bomb had already exploded in the passenger terminal. All incoming planes were diverted from Grand Canary Island to nearby Los Rodeos Airport on the north side of the island of Tenerife.
The consequences of this chain of events would be unimaginable - even to the terrorists.