Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. Of the 172 people on board, 146 die immediately, and eight more later die of injuries sustained in the crash.

Spanair Flight 5022 (JK5022/JKK5022) was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport to Gran Canaria Airport, Spain, with a stopover in Madrid–Barajas Airport that crashed just after take-off from runway 36L at Madrid-Barajas Airport at 14:24 CEST (12:24 UTC) on 20 August 2008. The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, registration EC-HFP. Of the 172 passengers and crew on board, 154 died and 18 survived.

Madrid is the capital and most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), second only to Berlin, Germany, and its metropolitan area is the second-largest in the EU. The municipality covers 604.3 km² (233.3 sq mi) geographical area. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the central part of the Iberian Peninsula at about 650 m (2,130 ft) above mean sea level. The capital city of both Spain and the surrounding autonomous community of Madrid, it is also the political, economic, and cultural centre of the country.

Gran Canaria, also Grand Canary Island, is the third-largest and second-most-populous island of the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the Atlantic coast of Northwest Africa. As of 2023 the island had a population of 862,893 that constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the capital of the island, is the largest city of the Canary Islands and the ninth-largest of Spain.

Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport is the main international airport serving Madrid, the capital of Spain, and its metropolitan area. At 3,050 ha in area, it is the second-largest airport in Europe by physical size behind Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. In 2019, 61.8 million passengers travelled through Madrid–Barajas, making it the country's busiest airport as well as Europe's fifth-busiest.