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Ask the Pilot: R.I.P. Bob Bragg. Last Surviving Pilot From Tenerife Dies at 79.

Ask the Pilot: R.I.P. Bob Bragg. Last Surviving Pilot From Tenerife Dies at 79.

Old Feb 22, 2017, 2:15 pm
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Ask the Pilot: R.I.P. Bob Bragg. Last Surviving Pilot From Tenerife Dies at 79.

In Ask the Pilot: R.I.P. Bob Bragg.

Robert Lee Bragg, of Harrisonburg, Virginia, passed away on February 9th. He was 79. He was the last surviving pilot of history’s deadliest plane crash.

On March 27th, 1977, on the Spanish island of Tenerife, he was the first officer of Pan Am flight 1736, a charter from New York, when it was struck on a runway in dense fog by a KLM 747 that had begun its takeoff roll without clearance. The collision killed 583 people, and remains the deadliest airline disaster of all time.

Sixty-one people survived the accident, including the entire Pan Am cockpit crew. For his bravery in assisting survivors, Bragg received the President’s Award for Heroism.

In 2006, I spent the better part of a day with Bob while working on a TV documentary about Tenerife. I remember when the producer called me at home, inviting me to help with the show. “Bob Bragg is going to be there as well,” he explained. “Bob is…”

He didn’t need to finish that sentence. I knew exactly who Bob Bragg was. And getting to meet him would be one of the great thrills of my life. Not because of any bravery or heroics. It was never about that. It was about the sheer momentousness of the crash — the almost unbelievable chain of events that led to the it, and its subsequent place in history. To have been a being witness to that — no, to have been part of it, right there in the cockpit! Bob Bragg was a giant.

And, of course, what happened at Tenerife is part of the greater story of the Boeing 747, history’s most influential jetliner. Sadly, we’ve now lost two of the most iconic characters from that story. Joe Sutter, the 747’s visionary creator, died last August at 95.


More here: http://www.askthepilot.com/express-blog/



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