- it was over 40 years ago (1977).
- it occured in exceptional circumstances (the Tenerife airport was overloaded because Gran Canaria airport was closed due to a terrorist incident).
- having a tower didn't help a lot because of thick fog. They didn't have ground radar either, but that probably wasn't unusual for a "provincial" airport in 1977.
Little bit of trivia, but on Sully’s famous flight he didn’t quite read back his takeoff correctly. You need to state your identifier AND runway and, IIRC, he only read back “cactus 1549 cleared for takeoff”, omitting the runway. Totally unrelated to the flight, just a little detail which the movie got right (I checked the liveATC audio).
A major cause of Tenerife was that the KLM captain was under the impression that clearance had been granted and the Pan-Am had left the active runway. And that his fellow crew who had been listening were afraid to speak up. A lot of improvements have resulted from that terrible accident.
We reviewed it in flight class, they were always using accidents to explain why rules are so important.