Too Close to Leave the Terminal

In the NOVA documentary, The Deadliest Plane Crash, First Officer Robert Bragg (who, along with the pilot and flight engineer survived the disaster) tells us that the refueling KLM 747 was blocking the Pan Am plane from leaving Tenerife.

"The engineer and I went out underneath the right wing and, basically, stepped off the distance between our wingtip and the KLM 747's wingtip, and we were 12 feet short of being able to taxi easily around the airplane."

In other words, the Pan Am flight could not leave Tenerife until after Captain van Zant's plane was out of the way.

Credits

Quote from the transcript of NOVA's documentary, The Deadliest Plane Crash, which originally aired on the 17th of October, 2006.