The chain of events leading up to the crash began earlier in the day at another airport in the Canary Islands. A militant separatist group set off a small bomb at Las Palmas Airport on Gran Canaria, closing that field and rerouting air traffic to the much-smaller Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife.
With the apron at Los Rodeos full of airplanes, overworked controllers began directing incoming flights onto taxiways that intersected the main runway.
