PSA 182 40th anniversary

[Tamalewagon]

A tribute:

Today at 9:01am marked the 40th anniversary of the tragic crash of PSA flight 182. I was 9 years old at the time and I'll never forget looking out our backyard and seeing the smoke from the crash. My father, who was a PSA captain was supposed to be flying that very flight but the flight was purchased from him the previous week. He was a senior captain and was immediately called down to headquarters here in San Diego and then was directed to the crash site to direct company personnel. It was one of the darkest moments in our family history and it affected him deeply as many of his close friends were killed that morning. He told me years later of the grim scene here in North Park where the accident occurred. Not one body was left in tact due to the plane hitting the ground at a very high angle and high speed. PSA was one of the best airlines and it was awesome to grow up in that "family". Prayers to the surviving family members. The "smile" lives on.

 

[WhatExit?]

On the morning of Monday, 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 McFeron, 42, First Officer Robert Fox, 38; Flight Engineer Martin Wahne, 44 and four flight attendants.

The flight from Sacramento to Los Angeles was uneventful. At 8:34 a.m., Flight 182 departed Los Angeles. First Officer Fox was the pilot flying. There were 128 passengers on board including 29 PSA employees. The weather in San Diego that morning was sunny and clear with 10 miles (16 km) of visibility. At 8:59 a.m., the PSA crew was alerted by the approach controller about a small Cessna 172 Skyhawk aircraft nearby. The Cessna was being flown by two licensed pilots. One was Martin Kazy Jr., 32, who possessed single-engine, multiengine, 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, David Boswell, 35, a U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant, possessed single-engine and multiengine ratings and a commercial certificate. He had flown just 407 hours and, at the time of the accident, was practicing instrument landing system approaches under the instruction of Kazy in pursuit of his instrument rating. They had departed from Montgomery Field and were navigating under visual flight rules, which did not require the filing of a flight plan. Boswell was wearing a "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 the missed approach (in visual meteorological conditions) from Lindbergh's 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 and they were speculating about its position. Lindbergh tower heard the 09.00:50 transmission as "He's passing off to our right" and assumed the PSA jet had the Cessna in sight.

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 blended in with 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 both 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 was made visually smaller due to foreshortening. However, the same report in another section also stated that "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 to it by ATC instead of turning to 90°, the NTSB estimates the planes would have missed each other by about 1000 feet (300 meters) instead of colliding. 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 "well clear" of the Cessna.

Approach Control on the ground picked up 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 prior to collision with the Cessna:

# = Nonpertinent word * = Unintelligible word () = Questionable text (()) = Commentary
Time Source Content
09:01:31 First officer Gear down
09:01:34 ((Clicks and sound similar to gear extension))
09:01:38 First officer There's one underneath
09:01:39 Unknown *
09:01:39 First officer I was looking at that inbound there
09:01:42 ((Sound of thump similar to nose gear door closing))
09:01:45 Captain Whoop!
09:01:46 First officer Aaargh!
09:01:47 ((Sound of impact))
09:01:47 Off-duty captain Oh # #

Wreckage of PSA 182 after the crash
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).[1] According to several witnesses on the ground, first, they heard a loud metallic "crunching" sound, then an explosion, and a fire drew them to look up.

Staff photographer Hans Wendt of the San Diego County Public Relations Office was attending an outdoor press event with a still camera and was able to take two post-collision photographs of the falling 727, its right wing burning.[4] Cameraman Steve Howell from local TV channel 39 was attending the same event and captured the Cessna on film as it fell to earth, 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 "Local, General, or Spot News Reporting".[5]

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 went down. PSA 182's right wing was heavily damaged, rendering the plane uncontrollable and sending it careening into a sharp right bank (clearly seen in the Wendt photos), and the fuel tank inside it ruptured and started a fire, when this final conversation took place inside the cockpit:

# = Nonpertinent word * = Unintelligible word () = Questionable text (()) = Commentary
Time Source Content
09:01:48 Unknown #
09:01:49 Captain Easy baby, easy baby
09:01:50 Unknown Yeah
09:01:51 ((Sound of electrical system reactivation tone on voice recorder,
system off less than one second))
09:01:51 Captain What have we got here?
09:01:52 First officer It's bad
09:01:52 Captain Huh?
09:01:53 First officer We're hit man, we are hit
09:01:55 Captain (to Lindbergh tower) Tower, we're going down, this is PSA
09:01:57 Lindbergh tower OK, we'll call the equipment for you
09:01:58 Unknown Whoo!
09:01:58 ((Sound of stall warning))
09:01:59 Unknown Bob!
09:01:59 Captain (to Lindbergh tower) This is it, baby!
09:02:00 First officer # # #
09:02:01 Unknown # #
09:02:03 Captain (on intercom, to passengers) Brace yourself
09:02:04 Unknown Hey, baby *
09:02:04 Unknown Ma, I love ya
09:02:04.5 ((Electrical power to recorder stops))

PSA 182 crash site as it appeared in 2010: Looking west down Dwight St., Nile Street intersection is in foreground; Boundary St. intersection in background. The initial impact was about 30 feet to the right of the photographer, on Nile St.

Flight 182 struck a house 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Lindbergh Field, in a residential section of San Diego known as North Park. It impacted at a 300 mph (480 km/h), 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 towards Boundary Street. One of the plane's wings lodged in a house. The coordinates for the Boeing crash site are 32°44′37″N 117°07′14″WCoordinates:

32°44′37″N 117°07′14″W. The largest piece of the Cessna impacted about six blocks away near 32nd Street and Polk Avenue. The coordinates for the Cessna crash site are 32°45′7.97″N 117°7′32.57″W. The explosion and fire from the 727 crashing created a mushroom cloud that could be seen for miles (and was photographed and filmed), About 60% of the entire San Diego Fire Department was ultimately dispatched to the scene, and first responders said nothing resembling an airplane was anywhere to be seen, since the impact, explosion, and fires had completely destroyed the 727 with no sizable components remaining except the engines, empennage, and landing gear.[4] However, the impact and debris area was relatively small due to the plane's steep, nose-down angle.

In total, 144 people[6] lost their lives in the disaster, including Flight 182's seven crew members, 30 additional PSA employees[7] deadheading to PSA's San Diego base, the two Cessna occupants, and seven residents (five women, two male children) on the ground.

 

[rrrr]

I remember that day. The photos and film of the impact zone were horrifying.

PSA tried to hang on, but the Flight 1771 crash in 1987 finished them off. An ex-employee shot and killed the crew while the aircraft was at 22,000 feet. The plane hit the ground at an estimated 770 MPH, just over the speed of sound.

 

[Danger Dave]

A tribute:

Today at 9:01am marked the 40th anniversary of the tragic crash of PSA flight 182. I was 9 years old at the time and I'll never forget looking out our backyard and seeing the smoke from the crash. My father, who was a PSA captain was supposed to be flying that very flight but the flight was purchased from him the previous week. He was a senior captain and was immediately called down to headquarters here in San Diego and then was directed to the crash site to direct company personnel. It was one of the darkest moments in our family history and it affected him deeply as many of his close friends were killed that morning. He told me years later of the grim scene here in North Park where the accident occurred. Not one body was left in tact due to the plane hitting the ground at a very high angle and high speed. PSA was one of the best airlines and it was awesome to grow up in that "family". Prayers to the surviving family members. The "smile" lives on.

View attachment 686717

What a coincidence. My dad flew for PSA as well, he was on the ground at Lindbergh in line to take off that day. Back then there were no cell phones. My mom thought it might've been my dad who went down and she came and got us out of school that day. She didn't tell me why we were being picked up until years later. My dad had another pilot call her and tell her he was fine but it took her a while to get the message.

 

[Tamalewagon]

What a coincidence. My dad flew for PSA as well, he was on the ground at Lindbergh in line to take off that day. Back then there were no cell phones. My mom thought it might've been my dad who went down and she came and got us out of school that day. She didn't tell me why we were being picked up until years later. My dad had another pilot call her and tell her he was fine but it took her a while to get the message.

Was a great way to grow up. Even flying standby back then wasn't bad especially when you got the "must ride" passes.