Forty years later, San Diego-bound travelers fly through much safer skies. Errors on the part of ATC were also named as contributing factors, including the use of visual separation procedures when radar clearances were available. Chesley Sully Sullenberger-style heroics, nothing like the Miracle on the Hudson. The Cessna disintegrated on contact with the jet, a Boeing 727-124, which was roughly 90 times heavier than the two-seater. As mentioned earlier, this was because the controller had instructed them to maintain visual separation from the traffic, making the pilots solely responsible for avoiding the specified aircraft. Stationed at the end of an alley, he was ordered to prevent people from getting closer to the fires. Crash Of PSA Flight 182 | Hidden San Diego Thats when it hit Vernon Franck he had been here before, as a 19-year-old Seabee, surrounded by a horrifying scene of death and destruction. In fact, during the first 90 seconds of this period, it was right in the middle of the pilots windscreens, where it should have been plainly visible, and indeed the pilots spotted it without difficulty. In several seconds the plane went from an altitude of over 3,000 feet to plunging into the earth in the residential part of the city. As such, the approach controller contributed to the accident by not taking further steps to verify that the two planes actually had each other in sight and were not in conflict. On September 25, 1978, a. Still, the majoritys findings prevailed until August 1982, when the board was persuaded to adopt McAdams positions in total. PSA was a great airline but was also cursed. This article is written without reference to and supersedes the original. PSA Flight 182 Crash Animation - YouTube Inadequacies in air traffic control procedures were cited as the sole contributing factor. 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. Now, 36 years later, San . Gregg N. Lindamood, 43, of Julian, a 14-year veteran pilot with PSA who had logged 11,000 hours in . 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 (1,100m) northwest of where the 727 went down. All around us was the stench of kerosene and burning flesh. However, in 1978 it was common for air traffic controllers to defer responsibility for separation onto pilots who had each other in sight, even if it was possible to continue providing positive radar separation as well. Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 was a Boeing 727-214 commercial airliner, registration, N533PS that collided with a private Cessna 172 light aircraft, registration, N7711G over San Diego, California, at 9:01 am on Monday, September 25, 1978.