Speaker 1: Picture a massive ninety one ton Bowing seven twenty seven
Speaker 1: just roaring through the sky at three hundred kilometers per.
Speaker 2: Hour rereck and it is packed with people.
Speaker 1: Right, packed with people. And now I want you to
Speaker 1: picture a tiny, single engine training plane just kind of
Speaker 1: floating in that exact same airspace.
Speaker 2: It's quite the contrast, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It really is. In September nineteen seventy eight, these two
Speaker 1: drastically different aircraft collided and perfectly clear sunny skies over
Speaker 1: San Diego.
Speaker 2: And you know the crazy part is they didn't crash
Speaker 2: it because of an engine exploding or like a wing snapping.
Speaker 1: Off, no catastrophic mechanical failure at all. This devastating collision
Speaker 1: happened because of microscopic human blind spots, the psychology of
Speaker 1: alarm fatigue, and literally a single fatal misheard syllable on
Speaker 1: a radio transmission.
Speaker 2: It's chilling when you break it down. So really grasp
Speaker 2: how this happens. You have to place yourself in the
Speaker 2: environment of San Diego's Lindbergh Field.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of a crazy airport, right.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a notoriously intense piece of aviation. Real it's
Speaker 2: the busiest single runway airport in North America. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: it sits directly next to this dense downtown city scape.
Speaker 2: You have high rise obstructions and then a very drastic
Speaker 2: terrain drop right before the runway, so.
Speaker 1: You're skimming over as skyscrapers basically essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this steep, dramatic approach that demands total concentration.
Speaker 2: You don't just casually glide into San Diego. You are
Speaker 2: threading a massive needle.
Speaker 1: And threading that needle on this particular like beautiful cloudless
Speaker 1: morning is Pacific Southwest Airlines PSA flight one eight two.
Speaker 2: A massive Boeing seven to twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Exactly carrying one hundred and twenty eight passengers, and thirty
Speaker 1: of those passengers are actually PSA employees heading back to
Speaker 1: their home base.
Speaker 2: PSA was famous back then for this very fun, laid
Speaker 2: back corporate culture.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Their literal motto was catch our smile. They painted
Speaker 1: it right onto the nose of their planes.
Speaker 2: That's right. And up in the cockpit you have an
Speaker 2: incredibly seasoned crew super experience.
Speaker 1: There's a nine year veteran first officer at the controls
Speaker 1: and a seventeen year veteran captain sitting next to him.
Speaker 2: A guy who is widely regarded by his peers, is
Speaker 2: just you know, a born pilot.
Speaker 1: So in this deep dive you are going to piece
Speaker 1: together the puzzle of what was at the time the
Speaker 1: deadliest aviation disaster in US history.
Speaker 2: We're going to explore the cascading series of invisible eras
Speaker 2: that brought these two planes together because sharing that exact
Speaker 2: same busy airspace floating out there in the sprawling San
Speaker 2: Diego morning is a tiny Cessna one SEV two insider.
Speaker 2: Just two people, right, just a flight instructor and his student.
Speaker 2: The contrast is staggering.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have this absolute beast of a commercial
Speaker 1: jetliner descending rapidly and this little mosquito of a.
Speaker 2: Training plane, completely dwarfed in size, speed, and technological capability.
Speaker 1: So let's walk through the timeline leading up to nine
Speaker 1: zero zero am, because it reveals how quickly a routine
Speaker 1: morning just completely unravels.
Speaker 2: Right, Flight one eighty two is descending down the coast
Speaker 2: from Sacra. Down on the ground, you have the approach
Speaker 2: controller sitting in a darkened room in front of a
Speaker 2: radar screen roughly fifteen kilometers away.
Speaker 1: And he spots both of them he does.
Speaker 2: He spots the radar return of the little cessna flying
Speaker 2: ahead of the mass of seven to.
Speaker 1: Twenty seven, so he does his job. He executes his
Speaker 1: training flawlessly and radio's PSA one to eighty two, issuing
Speaker 1: a really clear warning. He says traffic at twelve o'clock
Speaker 1: three miles out, and.
Speaker 2: The veteran crew of the seven twenty seven acknowledges the
Speaker 2: warning immediately, but they radio back the phrase that ultimately seals.
Speaker 1: Their fate, right They say, got it, traffic in sight.
Speaker 2: That radio call changes everything, how so well, the moment
Speaker 2: the pilot says traffic in sight, the controller essentially hands
Speaker 2: over the responsibility for visual separation to the flight crew.
Speaker 1: So the controller is no longer in charge of keeping
Speaker 1: them apart.
Speaker 2: Exactly under the rules visual flight. The pilot has acknowledged
Speaker 2: the other aircraft and is now legally responsible for maintaining
Speaker 2: a safe distance.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's kind of like two boats passing on
Speaker 1: an open lake. The overtaking boat is entirely responsible for
Speaker 1: watching out for the slower one.
Speaker 2: That's a perfect analogy. So the controller clears the seven
Speaker 2: to twenty seven for a visual approach inside the cockpit,
Speaker 2: the crews going through their final checklists.
Speaker 1: The cabin is secured, the heavy landing gear is coming down.
Speaker 1: By all accounts, it is a wonderfully routine.
Speaker 2: Descent until it suddenly violently isn't.
Speaker 1: Just before nine point zero am, the seven twenty seven
Speaker 1: essentially rear ends the Cessna mid air.
Speaker 2: The massive jet, moving with all that inertia at nearly
Speaker 2: three hundred kilometers per hour, just tears right through the
Speaker 2: much lighter, slower training plane.
Speaker 1: The physical physics of the impact are just devastating.
Speaker 2: Yeah. On the cockpit voice recorder, the suddenness of the
Speaker 2: catastrophe is chilling. There's the sound of the impact, a
Speaker 2: sharp intake of breath, and then alarms instantly blaring.
Speaker 1: The kinetic energy of the collision just destroys the seven
Speaker 1: to twenty seven's right wing right and its hydraulic lines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it completely cripples it. The massive aircraft goes into
Speaker 2: an uncontrollable steep dive.
Speaker 1: And the the final heartbreaking words captured on the recording
Speaker 1: before the jet plunges to the earth are simply, mah,
Speaker 1: I love you God.
Speaker 2: It's just awful. And this wreckage doesn't fall into an
Speaker 2: empty desert or a body of water.
Speaker 1: No, Both planes plummet directly into the quiet, densely populated
Speaker 1: San Diego residential neighborhood of North Park.
Speaker 2: The seven twenty seven crashes at the intersection of Dwight
Speaker 2: and Nile Streets.
Speaker 1: And the pieces of the Cessana land about six walks
Speaker 1: away at thirty second in pulk.
Speaker 2: The apocalyptic kinetic energy of a ninety one ton jet
Speaker 2: hitting a neighborhood at that angle is I mean, it's
Speaker 2: almost impossible to comprehend.
Speaker 1: Twenty two homes are instantly pulverized.
Speaker 2: For the first responders and police officers rushing to the scene,
Speaker 2: that devastation is surreal. It looks less like a plane
Speaker 2: crash and more like a large military bomb had got off.
Speaker 1: Witnesses talked about a massive, towering mushroom cloud of black
Speaker 1: smoke and fire right visible to thousands of people across
Speaker 1: the entire city.
Speaker 2: Yeah, passenger seats and landing gear are embedded in the
Speaker 2: sides of romain houses. The smell of jet fuel and
Speaker 2: destruction is literally everywhere.
Speaker 1: And everyone on board both planes is dead, plus seven
Speaker 1: residents on the ground who just happened to be in
Speaker 1: their homes. That morning, one hundred and forty four people
Speaker 1: in total.
Speaker 2: It's a staggering loss of life.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the sheer helplessness of those first responders.
Speaker 1: You know, they arrive with sirens blaring, adrenaline pumping, ready
Speaker 1: to pull people from the wreckage, and they just have
Speaker 1: to stand there.
Speaker 2: There is no one to save.
Speaker 1: They are reduced to covering bodies in a burning neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It is a profoundly grim task. When the National Transportation
Speaker 2: Safety Board gets the call, they deploy a lead investigator
Speaker 2: named Wally.
Speaker 1: Funk, and he arrives from Los Angeles to a scene
Speaker 1: that is just a sprawling, mangled mess of charred metal.
Speaker 2: As a seasoned investigator, his immediate overwhelming challenge is figuring
Speaker 2: out how to even begin putting this puzzle together.
Speaker 1: Because the wreckage only tells the final half second of
Speaker 1: the story right exactly.
Speaker 2: To figure out how a veteran flight crew over a
Speaker 2: plane right in front of them, he has to rewind
Speaker 2: the clock.
Speaker 1: Well, let's rewind that clock then, because honestly, I have
Speaker 1: to push back on the very premise of this airspace setup.
Speaker 2: Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 1: You have a massive commercial jet packed with one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty eight people on an assigned high speed glide
Speaker 1: path to a major international airport, right, and you have
Speaker 1: a tiny student plane practicing maneuvers in the exact same spot.
Speaker 1: It seems insane to me that the sky doesn't have
Speaker 1: a right of way rule. How do you mean, like,
Speaker 1: if an ambulance has its sirens on, you pull your
Speaker 1: Honda Civic over to the shoulder. It feels like the
Speaker 1: Cessena shouldn't even be allowed in the way of a jetliner.
Speaker 2: You know, that is the single most common bias people
Speaker 2: have when looking at aviation crashes.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, The media and the general public immediately assumed
Speaker 2: it had to be the Cessena's fault. They figured it
Speaker 2: was just an inexperienced student pilot who wandered into the
Speaker 2: path of a real airliner.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's an easy assumption.
Speaker 2: To make, it is, but an investigator has to dismantle
Speaker 2: that assumption entirely. The sky in nineteen seventy eight did
Speaker 2: not work like a highway with emergency lanes.
Speaker 1: So how did it work.
Speaker 2: It was strictly a first come, first serve system. The
Speaker 2: Sessna had every legal right to be occupying that specific
Speaker 2: piece of airspace.
Speaker 1: Which means the airliner has to navigate around the tiny plane,
Speaker 1: no matter how inconvenient it.
Speaker 2: Is, precisely that. So to physically visualize this impossible scenario,
Speaker 2: investigator Wally Funk actually brought the recovered wreckage of the
Speaker 2: Sesta over to a hangar and laid it out next
Speaker 2: to the main seven twenty seven wreckage.
Speaker 1: Wow. Literally piecing it together physically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he need to understand the spatial relationship. He had
Speaker 2: to look at the radar tracks to see the geometry
Speaker 2: of the collision, and.
Speaker 1: The radar tracks add a whole new layer of mystery
Speaker 1: to this, don't they They really do.
Speaker 2: The data shows that the Sessna actually drifted to the right,
Speaker 2: directly into the seven twenty sevens descending path.
Speaker 1: So if the Sessna had just flown perfectly straight, they
Speaker 1: likely wouldn't have collided.
Speaker 2: Most likely. Yes. The immediate question for Funk is why
Speaker 2: the Sessna drifted, and the answer lies in the cockpit
Speaker 2: of that small plane, specifically in what the student pilot
Speaker 2: was wearing.
Speaker 1: He had on something called a training hood, right, which
Speaker 1: is essentially a visor that restricts your vision.
Speaker 2: It's a black plastic shield that extends out from the
Speaker 2: forehead to block the pilot's view of the natural horizon
Speaker 2: outside the windows.
Speaker 1: Why would you want to block your view of the horizon.
Speaker 1: That sounds dangerous.
Speaker 2: Well, the whole point of the HOOD is sensory deprivation.
Speaker 2: It forces the student to ignore their outside environment and
Speaker 2: fly exclusively by referencing their glowing instrument panel.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see for training exactly.
Speaker 2: It's standard mandatory practice for getting an instrument rating.
Speaker 1: But human error happens, right like sometimes a student's gaze
Speaker 1: isn't scanning the altimeter and heading indicator fast enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and without the horizon for reference, the plane's heading
Speaker 2: will subtly drift.
Speaker 1: But wait, if we look at the timeline, even if
Speaker 1: the Sessana drifted slightly off course because of that training hood,
Speaker 1: PSA one eighty two had already told Air Traffic Control
Speaker 1: they had the Sessena insight. They did, and the NTSB
Speaker 1: did a massive visibility study during this investigation. Right, they
Speaker 1: mapped out the radar tracks, they mapped out the camera
Speaker 1: angles from the cockpit, and they found.
Speaker 2: That the PSA crew had one hundred and seventy seconds
Speaker 2: of completely unobstructed view of the Sessna through.
Speaker 1: Their windscreen nearly three full minutes of clear visibility.
Speaker 2: Almost three minutes. That is an absolute eternity in an airplane.
Speaker 1: So how do you miss a plane that is theoretically
Speaker 1: staring you in the face for one hundred and seventy seconds.
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 1: It feels exactly like when someone gets into a car
Speaker 1: and to look cool or stretch out, they reclaim their
Speaker 1: car seats so far back and so low that they
Speaker 1: can barely see over the steering wheel. If they lower
Speaker 1: their seat, they are changing the geometry of their entire
Speaker 1: field division they accidentally create a massive blind spot right
Speaker 1: beneath the hood of their car.
Speaker 2: As shocking as it sounds, that is fundamentally what happened
Speaker 2: in the cockpit of that seven twenty seven. Wait really, yes,
Speaker 2: The engineers who designed the Boeing seven twenty seven built
Speaker 2: a very specific tool into the cockpit called the design
Speaker 2: eye reference point.
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 2: These are literally little white balls aligned on the centerpost
Speaker 2: of the windscreen. The instruction is simple. You adjust the
Speaker 2: height of your pilot's seat until those balls line up
Speaker 2: in your vision and your eyes are now in the
Speaker 2: perfect mathematically optimal position to see out of the aircraft's
Speaker 2: complex window structure.
Speaker 1: But I'm guessing it wasn't a strict rule that you
Speaker 1: had to use them.
Speaker 2: It wasn't strictly enforced. Pilots come in all shapes and sizes,
Speaker 2: and over a long, tiring career, they tend to adjust
Speaker 2: the seat's lower for their own personal comfort.
Speaker 1: Or maybe to get a much better closer view of
Speaker 1: their instrument panel down below them.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And when the NTSB investigators recalculated that visibility study
Speaker 2: from this lower customized seat position, the mass changes completely.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, So that one hundred and seventy seconds of
Speaker 1: clearer visibility vanishes.
Speaker 2: Completely vanishes from that lower reclined seat angle. The Cessna
Speaker 2: was only visible in the seven to twenty seven's windscreen
Speaker 2: for about five to ten seconds. You're kidding, No, For
Speaker 2: the entire rest of the descent, the tiny plane was
Speaker 2: completely hidden in the massive blind spot below the nose
Speaker 2: of the jet.
Speaker 1: Five to ten seconds to spot a target before it
Speaker 1: disappears under your nose, and we have to factor in
Speaker 1: the visual environment too, right, It's not.
Speaker 2: Like the Cessna was painted neon orange against a pitch
Speaker 2: black sky.
Speaker 1: It was perfectly accidentally camouflaged. They are descending over the
Speaker 1: sprawling urban clutter of San Diego.
Speaker 2: You have a chaotic backdrop of white roofs, dark asphalt roads,
Speaker 2: sparkling lakes, and green trees. The background is constantly shifting
Speaker 2: and highly textured.
Speaker 1: And the Cessna is flying at roughly the same altitude
Speaker 1: and heading in the exact same direction as the jet.
Speaker 2: Which means it isn't creating much relative movement in the
Speaker 2: pilot's field of vision.
Speaker 1: And the human eye is evolutionarily wired to detect movement
Speaker 1: across a background exactly.
Speaker 2: A slow moving plane against a heavily cluttered, static looking
Speaker 2: city backdrop is almost impossible for the brain to pick
Speaker 2: out unless you were staring directly at its exact coordinates.
Speaker 1: Okay, that answers how they lost it in the background,
Speaker 1: but it raises a much more terrifying question for me.
Speaker 1: What's that If they couldn't see the Sessena because their
Speaker 1: seats were too low and the plane was camouflaged against
Speaker 1: the roofs of San Diego, then why on earth did
Speaker 1: the PSA crew tell the tower they had the traffic in.
Speaker 2: Sight To unravel that, the investigators had to listen obsessively
Speaker 2: to the cockpit voice recorder the CVR about thirty five
Speaker 2: seconds before the impact.
Speaker 1: What were they saying?
Speaker 2: The crew is recorded talking among themselves. They state that
Speaker 2: they see the plane at their one o'clock position, slightly
Speaker 2: to their right, and they specifically note that it is
Speaker 2: flying inbound, meaning it is flying toward them in the
Speaker 2: opposite direction.
Speaker 1: But the radar tracks proved the Cessna was actually at
Speaker 1: their eleven o'clock position, slightly to their left, and it
Speaker 1: was flying away from them in the same.
Speaker 2: Direction right, So the PSA pilots were describing a completely
Speaker 2: different aircraft.
Speaker 1: They weren't looking at the Cessna at all.
Speaker 2: No, they weren't.
Speaker 1: They safely cleared what was essentially a ghost plane. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: they genuinely believed they had identified the traffic the tower
Speaker 1: warned them about. They watched it pass, and they mentally
Speaker 1: checked the box and stopped looking. But how could there
Speaker 1: just be a ghost plane up there that air traffic
Speaker 1: control didn't know about.
Speaker 2: This requires understanding how radar worked in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: During the investigation, sixteen different witnesses on the ground reported
Speaker 2: seeing other small aircraft in that exact airspace at that time. Okay,
Speaker 2: the problem is the difference between primary and secondary radar.
Speaker 2: Primary radar just bounces radio waves off metals, very basic,
Speaker 2: and secondary radar, secondary radar actively interrogates a device in
Speaker 2: the plane called a transponder, which pings back altitude and identity.
Speaker 2: Many small private planes back then simply didn't carry transponders.
Speaker 1: H I see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Without a transponder pinging data, a small aircraft could
Speaker 2: be completely invisible to the approach controllers secondary radar screen.
Speaker 1: So the PSA pilots visually spotted one of these undocumented
Speaker 1: small planes, assumed it was their target and just moved on.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: This brings us to the air traffic controllers, and we
Speaker 1: really need to look at the systems in that dark
Speaker 1: radar room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a crucial part of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: Even if the pilots were confused by a ghost plane,
Speaker 1: the controllers have the Cessna and the seven to twenty
Speaker 1: seven on their screens, two glowing dots merging into one.
Speaker 1: Surely they had some kind of alarm system for this.
Speaker 2: We did, and this reveals the tragic irony of the
Speaker 2: new technology that had just been installed in the San
Speaker 2: Diego approach facility. They had a new system, they had
Speaker 2: a state of the art collision alert system programs specifically
Speaker 2: by computers to predict if two transponder equipped planes were
Speaker 2: going to hit.
Speaker 1: Well, it seems obvious that the alarm must have gone off.
Speaker 2: It did. The visual and auditory alarms triggered perfectly in
Speaker 2: the control room, but.
Speaker 1: They didn't radio the seven to twenty seven to pull
Speaker 1: up because of alarm fatigue, as.
Speaker 2: A deeply ingrained human psychological flaw. The controller heard the alarm,
Speaker 2: mentioned it to a supervisor, and then they wilfully ignored
Speaker 2: it because that brand new, highly sensitive system was horribly
Speaker 2: calibrated for the crowded San Diego airspace. It was giving
Speaker 2: them an average of thirteen false alarms every single day.
Speaker 1: Thirteen false alarms day means it just becomes background noise exactly.
Speaker 1: It's exactly like a car alarm going off on a
Speaker 1: busy city street. You don't think, oh, no, a grand
Speaker 1: theft auto is in progress. Your brain just filters it
Speaker 1: out and you think, wow, someone bumped a bumper. That's annoying.
Speaker 2: That is the perfect way to look at it. The
Speaker 2: controllers assumed it was just the system crying wolf.
Speaker 1: Again, and I suppose they felt that since the PSA
Speaker 1: jet had already confirmed visual contact over the radio. The
Speaker 1: pilots were actively handling the visual separation.
Speaker 2: Precisely under the operational guidelines of the time. The radar
Speaker 2: controller was not expected to intervene if visual rules were
Speaker 2: in effect, so they disregarded the flashing alert.
Speaker 1: But the radar controller hands the planes off to the
Speaker 1: local tower controller. Right, the guy looking out the window
Speaker 1: handling the final seconds before landing, and he didn't have
Speaker 1: that fancy new alarm system. He just had a regular
Speaker 1: radar display in his eyes, and he could see those
Speaker 1: two dots getting dangerously close. Yes, he could, so, about
Speaker 1: seventy seconds before the collision, he radios the seven to
Speaker 1: twenty seven to check in.
Speaker 2: And this is the moment the entire tragedy hinges on
Speaker 2: the final nail in the coffin comes down to how
Speaker 2: a single word is processed through the technology of the era.
Speaker 1: Because the PSA captain is now clearly unsure if he
Speaker 1: still sees the plane he thought was the Cessenet.
Speaker 2: Right, he's second guessing himself.
Speaker 1: He keys his microphone and says to the tower, I
Speaker 1: think he's passed off to.
Speaker 2: Our right, but that is not what the tower controller
Speaker 2: hears in his headset.
Speaker 1: Because of the reality of nineteen seventies VHF aviation radios,
Speaker 1: they are prone to static clipping and overlapping transmissions, very
Speaker 1: prone because of a burst of radio static At that
Speaker 1: exact millisecond the tower controller hears, I think he's passing
Speaker 1: off to our right.
Speaker 2: We really need to isolate the deadly psychological difference between
Speaker 2: those two words passed with an ed versus passing with
Speaker 2: an ing.
Speaker 1: If the pilot says he's passed off to our right,
Speaker 1: he is describing a historical event.
Speaker 2: Right, something he thinks has already concluded.
Speaker 1: It strongly implies he is no longer looking at the
Speaker 1: plane because it's behind him, and.
Speaker 2: More importantly, it implies a critical level of confusion. If
Speaker 2: the controller had clearly heard the word passed, he could
Speaker 2: have looked down at his radar screen, seeing that the
Speaker 2: seven twenty seven was actually still entirely behind the Cessna,
Speaker 2: and realized instantly that the pilot was completely dangerously mistaken.
Speaker 1: Because the physical threat was still directly in front of them.
Speaker 2: Exactly hearing the word passed would have triggered an immediate
Speaker 2: emergency intervention from the tower. The controller would have ordered
Speaker 2: them to abruptly change their heading or pull up.
Speaker 1: But the static clipped the audio morphing the word into.
Speaker 2: Passing and passing implies an active, ongoing, present tense action, so.
Speaker 1: To the controller's ear, passing meant the pilot was actively
Speaker 1: watching the Cessna out the window right at that very.
Speaker 2: Moment, Yes, continuously and safely managing the visual separation. It
Speaker 2: told the controller everything was fine. The pilot had eyes
Speaker 2: on the target and there was absolutely no need to
Speaker 2: worry or intervene.
Speaker 1: Wow because of one misheard syllable cloaked in static, the
Speaker 1: controller does nothing.
Speaker 2: He assumes they are safe.
Speaker 1: And seconds later, one hundred and forty four people are
Speaker 1: dead in the rubble of a San Diego neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It's just a cascade of completely avoidable tragedies. In the
Speaker 2: spring of nineteen seventy nine, the NTSB released its final
Speaker 2: exhaustive report.
Speaker 1: What was the official verdict.
Speaker 2: The primary fault was placed squarely on the PSA flight
Speaker 2: crew for failing to tell the tower immediately when they
Speaker 2: lost visual contact with the Sessna.
Speaker 1: Which makes sense, but the report.
Speaker 2: Acknowledged there was plenty of blame to go around CESTA
Speaker 2: pilot for drifting off his heading, the controllers for not
Speaker 2: providing specific radar vectors, and the systemic failure of disregarding
Speaker 2: a functioning collision alarm.
Speaker 1: Aggety of this magnitude happens. It forces an industry to
Speaker 1: look in the mirror. What is the legacy of this wreckage?
Speaker 1: How did this crash change the way we fly today?
Speaker 2: Well, it completely revolutionized the architecture of the sky. First,
Speaker 2: Lindberg Field immediately got a terminal Control Area or TCA.
Speaker 1: What does that do? Exactly?
Speaker 2: Think of a TCA like a massive, invisible, inverted wedding
Speaker 2: cake over an airport. It puts incredibly strict restrictions on
Speaker 2: what kind of traffic can even enter that airspace and
Speaker 2: requires all aircraft big or small to have functioning transponders
Speaker 2: and explicit permission to be there.
Speaker 1: So no more undocumented ghost planes wandering around exactly.
Speaker 2: And the Federal Aviation Administration also enacted the Sterile Cockpit Rule,
Speaker 2: changing how pilots behave.
Speaker 1: Oh right, because before PSA one to eighty two, pilots
Speaker 1: could chat about whatever they wanted, weekend plans, company gossip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the NTSB noted that casual conversation in the
Speaker 2: PSA cockpit might have reduced their vigilance.
Speaker 1: To they change the rules.
Speaker 2: The FAA mandate that when a plane is flying below
Speaker 2: ten thousand feet, which is where all the complex maneuvering,
Speaker 2: heavy traffic and terrain avoidance happens, the crew must strictly
Speaker 2: limit their conversation to the operation of the aircraft. No
Speaker 2: small talk, no distractions, total absolute focus on the approach.
Speaker 1: But the biggest, most monumental change to come out of
Speaker 1: this was the technology rate.
Speaker 2: Without a doubt, this tragedy violently accelerated the creation of TCS,
Speaker 2: the traffic collision avoidance system. I've heard of that it
Speaker 2: took a few years of intense engineering to perfect, but
Speaker 2: it is now standard mandatory equipment on all passenger planes globally.
Speaker 2: TCS is brilliant because it doesn't rely on ground controllers
Speaker 2: and it doesn't rely on static filled radio calls.
Speaker 1: The planes themselves communicate directly with each other.
Speaker 2: Yes, they interrogate each other's transponders. The system mathematically calculates
Speaker 2: the closure rates based on the transponder data, so.
Speaker 1: If two planes get dangerously closed, TCS just bypasses the
Speaker 1: ground entirely exactly.
Speaker 2: It explicitly shall it's into the cockpit with an automated
Speaker 2: voice telling one pilot to climb, climb, and coordinating with
Speaker 2: the other plane system to tell that pilot to descend, descend.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: It takes the human guesswork, the visual camouflage, and the
Speaker 2: ghost planes completely out of the equation.
Speaker 1: It's incredible how we've built these highly automated, mathematically precise
Speaker 1: systems to prevent this exact nightmare from ever happening again.
Speaker 2: It truly is a marvel of modern aviation safety.
Speaker 1: But you know, looking back at the human element of
Speaker 1: PSA one to eighty two, there is this haunting thought
Speaker 1: that I just can't shake.
Speaker 2: When you look at the totality of the investigation, what
Speaker 2: stands out to.
Speaker 1: You it's the alarm fatigue. The controllers in that dark
Speaker 1: room in nineteen seventy eight had the exact technology they
Speaker 1: needed to save those one hundred and forty four lives.
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 1: The alarm went off, the system worked, but they willfully
Speaker 1: ignored it because it cried wolf thirteen times a day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: think about our modern world right now. We suffer from endless,
Speaker 1: overwhelming notification fatigue. Our phones constantly buzzed with breaking news alerts.
Speaker 1: Our cars beep and flashlights if we drift a millimeter
Speaker 1: out of our lane. Our work dashboards flash red with
Speaker 1: urgent emails we instantly swipe away.
Speaker 2: That's a really good point.
Speaker 1: PSA one eighty two shows us that a safety system
Speaker 1: is only as good as the human trust placed in it.
Speaker 1: It really makes you wonder how many critical life altering
Speaker 1: warnings are you ignoring every single day, just because your
Speaker 1: brain assumes it's another false alarm. Are we destined to
Speaker 1: repeat the tragedy of the ignored collision alert, just in
Speaker 1: a completely different setting.