Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 was a Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) flight from Sacramento to San Diego, California with a stopover in Los Angeles. On September 25, 1978, the Boeing 727-214 serving the flight (registration: N533PS) and a private Cessna 172 (light aircraft; N7711G) collided mid-air over San Diego. It was PSA's first fatal accident and it remains the deadliest air disaster in California history. It was the deadliest air crash to occur in the United States until the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in May 1979. It currently stands as the seventh-deadliest non-intentional crash to occur on American soil.
Following their collision, both the Boeing and the Cessna crashed into North Park, a residential but urban uptown neighborhood located roughly three miles northeast of downtown San Diego. PSA 182 crashed just north of the intersection of Dwight and Nile Streets, killing all 135 people aboard the aircraft along with seven bystanders on the ground or residents in their homes, including two children. The Cessna struck Polk Avenue between 32nd and Iowa Streets, killing the two pilots on board. Nine others on the ground were injured and a total of 22 homes were either destroyed or damaged by the impact and debris.
Prelude
The crash of Flight 182 was preceded by a near-identical incident involving a different PSA Boeing 727 with a different Cessna plane. On January 15, 1969, a PSA Boeing 727-214 (N973PS) had collided with a Cessna 182L (N42242) on ascent from San Francisco International Airport, bound for Ontario International Airport. The 727 continued to Ontario and landed safely, while the Cessna suffered damage on the right wing and returned to San Francisco.
Accident
On the morning of September 25, 1978, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 departed Sacramento for San Diego via Los Angeles. The seven-person, San Diego–based crew consisted of captain James E. "Jim" McFeron (42), with 17 years of service at PSA; first officer Robert E. "Bob" Fox (38), with nine years of service; flight engineer Martin J. Wahne (44), with 11 years' service; and four cabin crew including purser Karen Borzewski (29), with 10 years of service, flight attendants Deborah McCarthy (29), with nine years of service, Dee Young (26), with five years of service, Kate Fons (20) and Daniel Jaine (39), with three months of service. Captain McFeron, a veteran pilot with PSA, had accumulated a total of 14,394 flight hours, including 10,482 hours on the 727. First Officer Fox had a total of 10,056 flight hours, including 5,800 hours on the 727. Flight Engineer Wahne had a total of 10,800 flying hours, with 6,587 hours in the 727.
The flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles was uneventful. At 8:34 a.m. PDT, Flight 182 departed Los Angeles, with Fox as the pilot flying. There were 128 passengers on board, including 29 PSA employees. The weather in San Diego was sunny and clear with ten miles (16 km) of visibility.
At 8:59 a.m., the PSA crew was alerted by the approach controller about a small Cessna 172 aircraft nearby. The Cessna was flown by two licensed pilots. Martin Kazy Jr., 32, possessed single-engine, multi-engine and instrument flight ratings, as well as a commercial certificate and an instrument flight instructor certificate. He had flown a total of 5,137 hours. The other pilot, David Boswell, 35, a U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, possessed single-engine and multi-engine ratings and a commercial certificate. He had flown 407 hours and was practicing instrument landing system approaches under the instruction of Kazy in pursuit of his instrument flight rules (IFR) rating. They had departed from Montgomery Field and were navigating under visual flight rules (VFR), which did not require the filing of a flight plan. Boswell was wearing a training hood to limit his field of vision straight ahead to the cockpit panel, much like an oversized sun visor with vertical panels to block peripheral vision, which is normal in IFR training. At the time of the collision, the Cessna was on a missed approach (in VFR conditions) from Lindbergh Field Runway 9, heading east and climbing. The Cessna was in communication with San Diego approach control.
The PSA pilots reported that they saw the Cessna after being notified of its position by ATC, although cockpit voice recordings revealed that shortly thereafter, the PSA pilots no longer had the Cessna in sight; they were merely speculating about its position. Because of radio static, Lindbergh tower, as per the tower voice recording, received the 09.00:50 transmission as "He's passing off to our right" and assumed that the PSA jet had the Cessna in sight, thus maintaining visual separation.
After receiving permission to land, and about 40 seconds before colliding with the Cessna, the conversation among the four occupants of Flight 182's cockpit (captain, first officer, flight engineer and off-duty PSA captain Spencer Nelson, who was riding in the cockpit's jump seat) was as follows, showing the confusion:
Despite the captain's comment that the Cessna was "probably behind us now," it was actually directly in front of and below the Boeing. The PSA plane was descending and rapidly closing in on the small plane, which had taken a right turn to the east, deviating from the assigned course. According to the report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Cessna may have been a difficult visual target for the jet's pilots, as it was below them and was difficult to perceive against the multicolored houses of the residential area beneath. The Cessna's fuselage was yellow, and most of the houses were a yellowish color. Also, the apparent motion of the Cessna as viewed from the Boeing was minimized, as the planes were on approximately the same course. The report said that another possible reason that the PSA aircrew had difficulty observing the Cessna was that its fuselage appeared smaller because of foreshortening. However, the same report in another section also stated, "the white surface of the Cessna's wing could have presented a relatively bright target in the morning sunlight."
A visibility study cited in the NTSB report concluded that the Cessna should have been almost centered in the windshield of the Boeing from 170 to 90 seconds before the collision, and thereafter it was probably positioned on the lower portion of the windshield just above the windshield wipers. The study also said that the Cessna pilot would have had about a 10-second view of the Boeing from the left-door window about 90 seconds before the collision, but visibility of the overtaking jet was blocked by the Cessna's ceiling structure for the remainder of the time.
Flight 182's crew never explicitly alerted the tower that they had lost sight of the Cessna. If they had made this clear to controllers, the crash might not have happened. Also, if the Cessna had maintained the heading of 70° assigned by ATC instead of turning to 90°, the NTSB estimates that the planes would have missed each other by about 1,000 ft (300 m). Ultimately, the NTSB maintained that, regardless of that change in course, it was the responsibility of the crew in the overtaking jet to comply with the regulatory requirement to pass clear of the Cessna.
Approach control received an automated conflict alert 19 seconds before the collision but did not relay this information to the aircraft because, according to the approach coordinator, such alerts were commonplace even when no actual conflict existed. The NTSB stated: "Based on all information available to him, he decided that the crew of Flight 182 were complying with their visual separation clearance; that they were accomplishing an overtake maneuver within the separation parameters of the conflict alert computer; and that, therefore, no conflict existed."
This was the conversation in the PSA cockpit starting 16 seconds before collision with the Cessna:
PSA Flight 182 overtook the Cessna, which was directly below it, both roughly on a 090 (due east) heading. The collision occurred at about 2,600 feet (790 m). According to several witnesses on the ground, they first heard a loud metallic crunching sound, then an explosion, and a fire drew them to look skyward.
Staff photographer Hans Wendt of the San Diego County Public Relations Office was attending an outdoor press event with a still camera and took two post-collision photographs of the falling 727, its right wing burning. Cameraman Steve Howell from local TV channel 39 was attending the same event and captured the Cessna on film as it fell toward the ground, the sound of the impacting 727 and the mushroom cloud from the resulting crash. For its coverage of the disaster, The San Diego Evening Tribune, a predecessor to The San Diego Union-Tribune, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1979 for its reporting.
The wreckage of the Cessna plummeted to the ground, its vertical stabilizer torn from its fuselage and bent leftward, its debris hitting around 3,500 feet (1,100 m) northwest of where the 727 crashed. PSA 182's right wing was heavily damaged, rendering the plane uncontrollable and sending it careening into a sharp right bank (seen in the Wendt photos), and its fuel tank ruptured and started a fire. The final conversation took place inside the cockpit:
Flight 182 struck a house at 3611 Nile Street, 3 miles (5 km) northeast of Lindbergh Field, in the North Park neighborhood of San Diego. It then impacted the driveway of the house at 260 knots (300 mph; 480 km/h), in a nose-down attitude while banked 50° to the right. Seismographic readings indicated that the impact occurred at 09:02:07, about 2.5 seconds after the cockpit voice recorder lost power. The plane crashed just west of the I-805 freeway, around 30 feet (9.1 m) north of the intersection of Dwight and Nile Streets, with the bulk of the debris field spreading in a northeast to southwesterly direction toward Boundary Street. One of the plane's wings lodged in a house. The largest piece of the Cessna impacted about six blocks away near 32nd Street and Polk Avenue. Cheryl "Sherry" Walker, a resident in the North Park neighborhood, was taking her 3-year old son Derek to her friend, Nancy Stout's, daycare center just as the plane crashed into the intersection. The impact propelled shrapnel into the center, destroying part of the roof. Walker and Derek were killed, as were Nancy Stout and her 4-year old son Robert in the daycare center. 3 residents living in adjacent homes were also killed (Amy Bolick, Lela Todd, and Darlene Watkins). The explosion and fire created a mushroom cloud that could be seen for miles. About 60% of the San Diego Fire Department was ultimately dispatched to the scene. The severity of the crash resulted in the engines, tail section and landing gear being the only recognizable parts from the aircraft. One of the policemen who arrived on the scene, officer P. L. Thornton, came across a car onto which a body from the aircraft had landed due to the force of the impact. Inside were 2 occupants: Mary Fuller of Lakeside, California and her infant son, who were driving down Boundary Street and had been hit by glass catapulted by the impact. Both were severely injured but alive (the Season 11 episode of Air Crash Investigation titled "Blind Spot" dramatizing the accident features a news report of the crash where a witness stated that both were killed, but this is false).
In total, 144 people died in the crash, including Flight 182's seven crew members, 30 additional PSA employees deadheading to PSA's San Diego base, the two Cessna occupants and seven residents (five women, two boys) on the ground. Among the victims was the son of Oscar-winning actress Claire Trevor as well as a passenger who was pregnant with her sixth child.
Investigation
At the nearby St. Augustine High School, a triage and command and control center was established, with its gymnasium used as a makeshift morgue and for forensic investigation. Freezer units were used to preserve the biological remains, as San Diego was in the middle of a severe heat wave, with temperatures exceeding 100 °F (38 °C).