[organman91]

As a private pilot, small planes going down occasionally are just a fact of life. But this incident scares me. There were four planes lined up on the taxiway the Air Canada narrowly missed. The worst aviation accident ever was a collision of two 747s resulting in 583 deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster - this could have doubled that number.

[oh_sigh]

Is it plausible that that AC759 could have taken out all 4 other planes? I don't really have a sense of the distances planes are spaced out on taxiways at major airports.

[DocTomoe]

Spacing between planes on a taxiway is a lot shorter than you would imagine. Depending on type, a 25-50 meters apart is common.

Keep in mind that these four planes were preparing for take-off, meaning that they were fully fuelled...

[Arn_Thor]

The KLM which had barely reached minimum takeoff speed and started to take off still flew 150 meters after it had plowed through the upper half of the PanAm and lost an engine and the main wheels. There's a lot of momentum in a moving plane, and they're stacked very close when holding on the taxiway

[village-idiot]

Would also double the record for number of vehicles involved in an incident too, I believe