Georgia Hardstark

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4,112 appearances 38 recordings 2 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard Feb 2025

Georgia Hardstark’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark · 467 - Nipper & The Hat · 13 Feb 2025 podcast

Did you watch the Nova episode called The Deadliest Plane Crash? It's like I survived. What year was it from? It's 2006. It feels old. I may have. Yeah, yeah. I bet you did because it totally reads like an I survived episode. Okay. And it's so hard to watch. And the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. That was the main source I used when I watched it and cried.

But then I was like, Vince, I shouldn't do this this week, right? And he was like, I'm not worried about it. And I'm like, oh, it's just us who have anxiety. Yeah.

Yeah, in a car accident. Cars are less safe than airplanes.

Yeah. And I think that we also feel some kind of control when it comes to stepping into our bathtub or getting into a car. We at least have a little bit of control over what's happening. And in an airplane, you give it all up. And so it's scary.

Yeah, carry a beta blocker. You don't have to take it, but just like knowing that it's in my purse does help sometimes. Okay. Also, we're getting on a plane next month, you and I, so sorry about that.

Someone's flying right now and they're like, I'm just going to listen until I can't anymore. Yeah. Jessica, stay with us. You've got this. Okay. So let's talk about the Canary Islands. They're a chain of seven islands off the coast of northwestern Africa, as you know. However, they're Spanish territories. This is clearly a bit contentious with everybody.

There have been several movements for independence over the years with disputes of who controls some of the waters around the islands. Regardless, we're not getting to that today. The islands are a hugely popular tourist destination. You've heard of them, right? I have because there was those murders. Oh, that's right. Yeah, recently. Regardless, so the islands are sunny. They're tropical.

It's tropical weather pretty much year round. And they are home to hundreds of beach resorts and water parks. A beautiful place to go. When you hear British people talking about a sun holiday, they're probably talking about the Canary Islands. Like they go there a lot. So here we are on the island of Gran Canaria on March 27th, 1977. It's shortly after 1 p.m.

at the Gran Canaria Airport, which is the main airport servicing the island. So it's a pretty sizable island and airport. And a bomb explodes in the departures area. Oh. So this is just one of those little moments. It has nothing to do with the plane crash that's going to happen later. It's just a chance thing that leads to the next thing, right?

A group called the Canary Islands Separatist Movement takes credit for the explosion, injures eight people, and the group threatens that there will be a second explosion that day. So that's the first thing that happens. The airport's evacuated, obviously, and all flights that are scheduled to land there are diverted, right?

Most of them are diverted to the much smaller Los Rodeos Airport on the neighboring island of Tenerife. And it's about a 25 minute flight between the two islands. Los Rodeos has only a single runway. It's very small. One large taxiway and four much smaller taxiways branching off of that. So it's like the Burbank Airport compared to like LAX. Right. You know.

And it's not designed to accommodate the number of aircraft that have now been diverted there because of this unexpected explosion. Also, it's a Sunday, and so there are only two air traffic controllers on duty at this smaller airport. So among the flights that have been diverted to Los Rodeos are Pan Am Flight 1736, which flew out of LAX. Yeah. You know all this. Do you know this one?

No, no, no. I don't know. I don't know like that. OK.

Totally. So it had flown out of LAX, made a refueling stop at JFK in New York, and then the other flight was KLM flight 4805. That one originated in Amsterdam, and that was a charter flight for a tour company called the Holland International Travel Group. So both planes are, as you just said, Boeing 747s. Mm-hmm.

the first wide-body plane designed for commercial travel to be considered a jumbo jet. And they have a distinctive upper deck as well, which we don't have anymore, right, upper decks?

Huge jumbo jets. So, like, those were the only two jumbo jets that went to Tenerife that day. Everything else was smaller, but, you know, they weren't supposed to be there. Right. The pilot of the KLM flight, the Dutch flight, is Jacob van Zanten. He is one of the most senior pilots at KLM. In fact, he is the airline's chief pilot and is in charge of training new pilots.

He's like the best of the best, this kind of older senior pilot. He's so well regarded in the industry that he is featured prominently in KLM's advertising. Like when they show like, these are the people who fly you. It's like, this guy is like... Did you get to see a picture of him? Yeah. He's like a, you know, older, gray, zaddy type. Nice. Yeah.

No extra words because there's just like, yeah. Because they're like, logic.

Yeah. Yeah. There's no chitchat. You're totally right. So he's he's definitely that guy. However, if we're wrong about that, write in pilots. Let us know if we're wrong. But I will say about this guy, though, and you'll like this. He everyone says he's a warm and friendly guy. Oh, great. And that he insisted his co-workers call him by his first name instead of addressing him as captain.

So like he's fucking down to earth. Chill. Chill. Good at what he does. Maybe he'll tell you about that one time he saw a UFO. The weird thing on this guy. Yes, like he's so likable. Okay. And the first officer, co-pilot, he's pretty green and he's currently being trained by Captain Van Zanten. And almost everyone on that flight is Dutch. Many of them are families going on vacation.

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