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Pacific-Southwest-Airlines-Flug 182

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Vorlage:Infobox Mid-air accident


Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182, registration N533PS, was a Boeing 727-214 aircraft that collided with a private Cessna 172 while on approach to San Diego, California's Lindbergh Field on a flight from Sacramento via Los Angeles on September 25, 1978.

The Boeing crashed into North Park, a San Diego neighborhood, killing all 135 on board. The two men aboard the Cessna also perished, as did seven persons on the ground, including a family of four. Nine other people on the ground were injured and 22 homes were destroyed or damaged. With a death toll of 144 it remains the worst aircraft disaster in California history to date, and was the first Pacific Southwest Airlines incident involving fatalities.

Flight 182 had just begun its final approach into Lindbergh Field when it overtook the Cessna, which was being flown by two licensed pilots (not by a single student pilot as is often incorrectly stated). The Cessna was struck by the right wing of the Boeing, sending both aircraft crashing into the neighborhood below.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the PSA flight crew to follow proper air traffic control (ATC) procedures. Flight 182's crew lost sight of the Cessna in contravention of the ATC's instructions to "keep visual separation from that traffic", and did not alert ATC that they had lost sight of it. Errors on the part of ATC were also named as a contributing factor, including the use of visual separation procedures when radar clearances were available. Additionally the Cessna pilots, for reasons unknown, did not maintain their assigned heading of 070 degrees after completing a practice instrument approach, nor did they notify ATC of their course change.

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 kept the Cessna in sight and were speculating about its position; at one point the 727's captain radioed the tower, "Okay, we had it there a minute ago... I think he's passed off to our right". However, the controller heard this transmission as "He's passing off to our right" and assumed the PSA jet had the Cessna in sight.

A study conducted by Boeing determined that the Cessna's target should have remained visible for sufficient time to correct the collision situation. Approach Control on the ground picked up a conflict alert 19 seconds before the collision but did not relay this information to the aircraft because, according to the approach co-ordinator, such alerts were commonplace even when there was no actual conflict.

Events inside the cockpit of the PSA plane, as recorded by its "Black Box", shed further light on how the accident happened.

After getting permission to land, and about 40 seconds before colliding with the Cessna, the conversation among the four occupants of the cockpit (captain, first officer, flight engineer and an off-duty PSA captain who was riding in the cockpit's jump seat), was as follows:

Time Source (and destination) Content
0901:11 First officer Are we clear of that Cessna?
0901:13 Flight Engineer Suppose to be.
0901:14 Captain I guess.
0901:20 Off-duty captain (laughing) I hope!
0901:21 Captain Oh yeah, before we turned downwind I saw him at about one 'o'clock. Probably behind us now.

Actually, the Cessna was directly in front of and below the Boeing, and the PSA jet was descending and rapidly closing in on the small plane, which had taken a right turn to the east, deviating from the course assigned to it. According to the NTSB report the Cessna would have been a difficult visual target for the jet plane's pilots, as it was below them and blended in with the multicolored hues of the residential area beneath, and the apparent motion of the Cessna as viewed from the Boeing was minimized as both planes were on approximately the same course. Yet another reason for reduced visibility of the Cessna was that its fuselage was made visually smaller due to foreshortening.

The pilot of the PSA jet never explicitly alerted the tower that he and his crew had lost sight of the Cessna. If he and his crew had made this clear to controllers, the crash might not have happened. Also, if the Cessna had maintained the heading of 70 degrees assigned to it by ATC, the NTSB estimates the planes would have missed each other by about 1000 feet instead of colliding, but the NTSB also stated that regardless of that change in course, it was the responsibility of the crew of the overtaking jet to comply with the regulatory requirement to pass "well clear" of the Cessna.

This was the conversation in the PSA cockpit starting 16 seconds prior to collision with the Cessna:

Time Source (and destination) Content
0901:31 First Officer Gear down
0901:34 Clicks and sound similar to gear extension
0901:38 First officer There's one underneath - I was looking at that inbound there!
0901:42 Sound similar to nose gear door closing
0901:45 Captain Whoop! (involuntary groan as co-pilot pulled up the nose rapidly in a last ditch effort to avoid impact)
0901:46 First officer Aaargh!
0901:47 Sound of impact
0901:47 Off-duty Captain Oh (expletive)!

During the 17 seconds that elapsed from the moment of collision to the impact with the ground, this final conversation took place inside the cockpit of the out of control jet:

Time Source (and destination) Content
0901:49 Captain Easy baby, easy baby.
0901:50 Unknown Yeah
0901:51 Sound of electrical system reactivation tone on voice recorder, system off less than one second
0901:51 Captain What have we got here?
0901:52 First officer It's bad.
0901:52 Captain Huh?
0901:53 First officer We're hit, man! We are hit!
0901:55 Captain (to tower, in a calm voice) Tower, we're going down. This is PSA.
0901:57 Tower OK, we'll get out the (emergency) equipment for you.
0901:58 Unknown Whoo!
0901:58 Sound of stall warning
0901:59 Captain (to tower) This is it, baby!
0901:59 Unknown Bob
0902:00 First Officer (conversation deleted by NTSB as not germaine)
0902:01 Unknown (conversation deleted by NTSB)
0902:03 Captain (on intercom, to passengers) Brace yourself.
0902:04 Unknown Hey, baby.
0902:04 Unknown Ma, I love you.
0902:04.5 Electrical power to recorder stops

Investigators determined that the 727 struck the ground in a high speed nose down attitude, while banked 50° to the right.

As a result of the collision the National Transportation Safety Board recommended the immediate implementation of a Terminal Radar Service Area around Lindbergh Field to provide for the separation of aircraft, and also recommended an immediate review of control procedures for all busy terminal areas. The impact of these recommendations is reflected in today's arrangement of airspace around Lindbergh Field; a Class B area (formerly referred to as a Terminal Control Area) now exists around Lindbergh to provide for the separation of all aircraft operating in the area.

A dissenting opinion by NTSB member Francis H. McAdams within the NTSB report strongly questioned why the unauthorized change in course by the Cessna was not specifically cited as a "contributing factor" in the final report; instead, it was listed as simply a "finding", which carries less weight. McAdams also "sharply disagreed" with the majority of the panel on other issues, giving more weight to inadequate ATC procedures as another "probable cause" to the incident, rather than merely treating them as a contributing factor. McAdams also added the "possible misidentification of the Cessna by the PSA aircrew due to the presence of third unknown aircraft in the area" as a contributing factor. The majority panel members did not cite this as a credible possibility.

Of the two licensed pilots in the Cessna, one, 32 year old Martin B. Kazy Jr., possessed single-engine, multi-engine and instrument flight ratings, as well as a commercial certificate and an instrument flight instructor certificate. The other, 35 year old David Boswell, possessed single-engine, multi-engine ratings and a commercial certificate and was at the time of the accident practicing instrument flight under the instruction of Kazy in pursuit of his instrument rating.

One of the victims on board PSA Flight 182 was Alan Tetelman, president of Failure Analysis, en route to investigate a U.S. Navy plane crash.

Staff photographer Hans Wendt of the San Diego County Public Relations Office was attending an outdoors event with a still camera, and was able to take two photographs of the falling Boeing after the collision with the Cessna.[1]  Cameraman Steve Howell from local TV channel 39 was attending the same event as Wendt, and captured the Cessna on film as it fell to earth.

In a fact-following-fiction scenario, the NBC telemovie Emergency!: Survival on Charter #220 (effectively a two-hour Emergency! episode filmed after the show was no longer a weekly series) was aired in March 1978, six months before the accident involving PSA Flight 182. It detailed the accidental daytime mid-air collision of a Douglas DC-8 airliner and a much smaller two-person aircraft and the resulting crash in a residential area of Los Angeles County.

See also

References

  • National Transportation Safety Board report NTSB-AAR-79-5
  • Macarthur Job (1996). Air Disaster Volume 2

Vorlage:Airlistbox

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