Speaker 1: Picture the sky over southern California back in September of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. You're just looking up on this crisp,
Speaker 1: perfectly clear morning in San Diego. You know, the kind
Speaker 1: of sun drenched blue that just feels totally limitless.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, those classics Southern California morning exactly.
Speaker 1: And gliding down through that pristine air is Pacific Southwest
Speaker 1: Airlines Flight one eighty two. It's this massive Boeing seven
Speaker 1: twenty seven, gracefully descending over the bustling city, and inside
Speaker 1: the cabin, I mean, the vibe is incredibly.
Speaker 2: Relaxed, right because a lot of them were actually airline staff,
Speaker 2: weren't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Out of the one hundred and twenty eight passengers
Speaker 1: on board, thirty of them are actually PSA employees just
Speaker 1: heading home after a shift. So the crew is joking around,
Speaker 1: people are looking out the windows at the neighborhoods below.
Speaker 1: It is the absolute picture of routine. But at exactly
Speaker 1: nine am, that calm is just violently.
Speaker 2: Shattered, completely shattered.
Speaker 1: And that patch of blue sky becomes the site of
Speaker 1: the worst aviation disaster in US history.
Speaker 2: At the time, it really was a morning that just
Speaker 2: fracked sure, the reality of everyone on the ground, you know,
Speaker 2: the aftermath of what happened in those few seconds. It
Speaker 2: didn't just leave a massive scar on San Diego. It
Speaker 2: actually forced a total ground up rewrite of how human
Speaker 2: beings navigate the sky.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly our mission for this deep dive.
Speaker 1: We are going to deconstruct this tragic mid air collision
Speaker 1: between a ninety one ton commercial jetliner and a tiny
Speaker 1: little cessna.
Speaker 2: It's just such an unbelievable mismatch in size.
Speaker 1: Right, and we're looking at this terrifying chain of entirely
Speaker 1: mundane events. I mean, we're talking about a single misheard
Speaker 1: syllable over a radio, a pilot adjusting a seat for comfort,
Speaker 1: and just a momentary distraction in the cockpit. We'll explore
Speaker 1: how those tiny human factors doomed one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: four people, and how investigators, you know, peace through the
Speaker 1: ashes to create the rigid rules that keep you safe
Speaker 1: on every single flight you take today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to really grasp how this disaster materialized, you have
Speaker 2: to first picture the chaotic environment of San Diego's Lindbergh
Speaker 2: Field back in nineteen seventy eight. Because this wasn't your
Speaker 2: standard sprawling international airport out in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: It was right in the thick of it, wasn't it. Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It was the busiest single runway airport in North
Speaker 2: America and it was pretty notorious among pilots for its
Speaker 2: unforgiving geography. You had this very drastic terrain drop off
Speaker 2: just before the runway, and well, it was situated right
Speaker 2: in the heart of the city.
Speaker 1: Like flying right past skyscrapers.
Speaker 2: Exactly incredibly close to downtown high rises and dense residential neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Man, it sounds like trying to land a commercial jet
Speaker 1: in a crowded football stadium. And you're not just dealing
Speaker 1: with the tricky geography, right, the airspace itself was just swarming.
Speaker 2: Swarming is the perfect word for it. You had heavy
Speaker 2: commercial jets, private student planes, military aircraft from nearby bases,
Speaker 2: all just funneling into this exact same small bowl of sky.
Speaker 2: The traffic volume was honestly staggering.
Speaker 1: Like how many flights are we talking?
Speaker 2: That confined space handled around six hundred flights a day.
Speaker 2: And the craziest part is air traffic control was operating
Speaker 2: under a system that seems well completely unthinkable now. It
Speaker 2: was essentially a first come, first serve shared airspace.
Speaker 1: Wait, first come, first serve. Imagine navigating a packed multi
Speaker 1: lane highway at two hundred miles per hour where you've
Speaker 1: got massive eighteen wheelers and tiny little sedans all weaving
Speaker 1: through the exact same lanes, but there are no lane
Speaker 1: markers and there are no stoplights. I mean, how was
Speaker 1: a system like that ever considered saved by anyone?
Speaker 2: I know it sounds insane to us now, but at
Speaker 2: the time, radar technology and ATC infrastructure, they just simply
Speaker 2: couldn't micro manage every single aircraft all the way to
Speaker 2: the ground. So the system relied heavily on the actual
Speaker 2: eyes of the pilots to maintain order.
Speaker 1: Just looking out the window and hoping for the best.
Speaker 2: Pretty much, and flying into this intense, high stakes environment
Speaker 2: is our cast of characters. So PSA Flight one eighty
Speaker 2: two was commanded by Captain Jim McFerrin, who was this
Speaker 2: highly regarded seventeen year veteran.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was known to his peers as a born pilot.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly real natural and he was flying alongside First
Speaker 2: Officer Bob.
Speaker 1: Fox, and PSA had this really unique corporate culture back
Speaker 1: then too, I mean their official motto was literally catch
Speaker 1: our smile, and they actually painted huge smiles on the
Speaker 1: noses of their planes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the crews were known for being incredibly professional, but
Speaker 2: also highly personable and just laid back. They wanted the
Speaker 2: flying experience to be fun and stress free for everyone. Right.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, flying right below that descending seven twenty seven,
Speaker 1: sharing that exact same patch of sky, is a tiny
Speaker 1: Cessna one seventy two. It belonged to a local flight training.
Speaker 2: School, and inside that Sessna are an instructor and a
Speaker 2: student pilot just out on a routine training flight.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's track the chronological timeline here, because the
Speaker 1: way this nightmare unfolds is just chilling. The approach controller
Speaker 1: on the ground spots the tiny Cessna on his radar,
Speaker 1: sees it's ahead of the descending jet, and he radios
Speaker 1: the PSA crew to warn them.
Speaker 2: Right, standard procedure.
Speaker 1: So the jet crew looks out the window, they spot
Speaker 1: the Cessna and they reply, got it, traffic in sight.
Speaker 1: And once they say that, the controller tells them to
Speaker 1: maintain visual separation.
Speaker 2: And that phrase right there, visual separation is the entire
Speaker 2: folkrum of this tragedy.
Speaker 1: Because it shifts the blame, right or the responsibility. I
Speaker 1: should say, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: In the Aviation Protocols of nineteen seventy eight, the moment
Speaker 2: a jet pilot acknowledges they have visual contact with another plane,
Speaker 2: the legal and practical responsibility to avoid a collision shifts entirely.
Speaker 2: It goes from the air traffic controller looking at a
Speaker 2: safe radar screen directly to the pilot looking out the windshield.
Speaker 1: So they're on their own pretty much.
Speaker 2: It's basically a maritime rule applied to the sky. The
Speaker 2: faster overtaking vessel is solely responsible for steering clear of
Speaker 2: the slower one wow.
Speaker 1: So the controller on the ground just steps back. The
Speaker 1: PSA crew is now one hundred percent responsible for avoiding
Speaker 1: the Sessna. They know it's there, they explicitly confirmed they
Speaker 1: saw it. But at exactly nine am, this ninety one
Speaker 1: ton Boeing flying at almost three hundred kilometers per hour
Speaker 1: just runs down the tiny sessa from right behind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the destruction was just instantaneous. The sheer energy of
Speaker 2: a Boeing seven twenty seven impacting a light aircraft midair.
Speaker 2: I mean it tore the cessant apart instantly.
Speaker 1: And thousands of people on the ground in San Diego
Speaker 1: just watched this happen above their heads. A massive mushroom
Speaker 1: cloud of smoke and fire or erupts in the morning sky.
Speaker 1: Pieces of the fuselage, passenger seats, and horrifyingly bodies rained
Speaker 1: down into this quiet residential neighborhood called North Park.
Speaker 2: It's just unfathomable for the people living there.
Speaker 1: The devastation on the ground was absolutely apocalyptic. Twenty two
Speaker 1: homes were completely destroyed by the falling wreckage.
Speaker 2: One hundred and forty four people died, and that toll
Speaker 2: included everyone on both of the aircraft, plus seven residents
Speaker 2: on the ground who were literally just going about their
Speaker 2: morning routines, drinking coffee, getting ready for work.
Speaker 1: Just awful. And when the National Transportation Safety Board the
Speaker 1: NTSB dispatched their lead investigator, Wally Funk, from Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: the scenes she arrived at basically resembled a war zone.
Speaker 2: It was a massive, horrific puzzle skadded across the city.
Speaker 2: The bulk of the jet came down at the intersection
Speaker 2: of Dwight and Nile Streets, leaving a huge crater, while
Speaker 2: the mangled remains of the cessena were actually found about
Speaker 2: six blocks away.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy is that the local media narrative formed
Speaker 1: before the fires were even put out. Everyone immediately blamed
Speaker 1: the student pilot in the Cessna.
Speaker 2: Of course they did. People naturally assume the massive commercial
Speaker 2: airliner on an assigned glide path has the right of way,
Speaker 2: and well, the amateur in the little plane must have
Speaker 2: done something incredibly reckless to get in their way.
Speaker 1: Right, But investigators don't deal in assumptions. They deal in data.
Speaker 1: When they pulled the secondary surveillance radar tracks from a
Speaker 1: station in Los Angeles and calculated the exact trajectories of
Speaker 1: the two planes, the math told a completely different story.
Speaker 2: A completely reverse story.
Speaker 1: Honestly, the Cessna didn't veer wildly into the jet. The
Speaker 1: seven to twenty seven ran straight through the back of
Speaker 1: the Cessna.
Speaker 2: Which opens up this truly terrifying mystery for the NTSB
Speaker 2: on Earth does a veteran jet crew run down an
Speaker 2: airplane they already explicitly confirmed they saw right.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense. So what was the first clue.
Speaker 2: Well, the first piece of that puzzle was actually found
Speaker 2: inside the tiny Cessna. Because it was a training flight.
Speaker 2: The student pilot was practicing flying strictly by instruments, and
Speaker 2: to do that, the student was wearing a specific device
Speaker 2: called a training hood.
Speaker 1: A training hood is that kind of like putting blinders
Speaker 1: on a horse, so they only look straight ahead.
Speaker 2: It's very similar in design, yeah, but the physiological effect
Speaker 2: on a human pilot is much more profound. It's basically
Speaker 2: a physical shield that extends out from the forehead and
Speaker 2: completely blocks out the side windows and the natural horizon.
Speaker 1: So they can't see the sky at all.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The pilot can only see the glowing dials on
Speaker 2: the instrument panel in front of them. But the problem
Speaker 2: is humans rely heavily on the visual horizon to maintain
Speaker 2: our sense of balance. Without it, the fluid in your
Speaker 2: inner ear can play some really dangerous tricks on your brain.
Speaker 1: Oh, like spatial disorientation.
Speaker 2: Exactly. A pilot can feel like they're flying perfectly straight
Speaker 2: and level while the aircraft is actually entering a slow
Speaker 2: banking turn.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the student pilot got disoriented because of the hood,
Speaker 1: and the radar data confirms this. Right. The Cessna was
Speaker 1: assigned to hold a strict seventy degree heading, but they
Speaker 1: drifted slightly off course, essentially turning right into the direct
Speaker 1: flight path of the descending bowing.
Speaker 2: The drift definitely happened. However, when the NTSB plotted those
Speaker 2: radar tracks and meticulously calculated the viewing angles from the
Speaker 2: seven to twenty sevens cockpit, they made a really stunning discovery,
Speaker 2: which was, even with the cessna's drift, the small plane
Speaker 2: was technically visible through the jets windshield for one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy seconds leading up to the impact.
Speaker 1: Hey, one hundred and seventy seconds. That's almost three full
Speaker 1: minutes of clear visibility in an aircraft traveling at three
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers per hour. Three minutes is an absolute eternity.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can cover miles of sky in that time,
Speaker 1: you really can.
Speaker 2: So investigators had to figure out how something sitting in
Speaker 2: planes just becomes completely invisible to train professionals, and they
Speaker 2: uncovered this series of visual illusions that essentially deleted the
Speaker 2: Cessna from the pilot's perception entirely.
Speaker 1: That's terrifying. What was the first illusion?
Speaker 2: The first one is basically a biological quirk of the
Speaker 2: human eye regarding relative motion.
Speaker 1: Okay, so because both planes are flying in the same
Speaker 1: general direction and at roughly the same altitude at that
Speaker 1: specific moment, the cessna isn't actually moving across the jets windshield. Right,
Speaker 1: It isn't crossing from left to right or dropping from
Speaker 1: top to bottom.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Evolution wired are favile vision. You know, the sharp
Speaker 2: central part of our eyesight to detect motion. It's how
Speaker 2: our ancestors spotted predators hiding in the brush.
Speaker 1: Right. If it moves, you see it. If it stays still,
Speaker 1: it blends in.
Speaker 2: Exactly, when an object is completely static in your field
Speaker 2: of vision, it just slowly grows slightly larger as you
Speaker 2: approach it. The human brain naturally filters out static objects as.
Speaker 1: Background noise, so it literally becomes a blind spot generated
Speaker 1: by our own biology. But even if it's static, you'd
Speaker 1: think a plane against the open sky would stand out.
Speaker 2: You would think so, except they weren't looking at the
Speaker 2: open sky.
Speaker 1: Oh, right, because they were descending.
Speaker 2: Yes, the jet was in a descent, so the pilots
Speaker 2: were looking down over the sprawling urban grid of San Diego,
Speaker 2: and the cessna was flying low set against this chaotic,
Speaker 2: high contrast backdrop of white roofs, dark roofs, paved asphalt roads,
Speaker 2: and green trees.
Speaker 1: So the painted surface of the tiny cessna just perfectly
Speaker 1: blended into the visual clutter of the city below them.
Speaker 2: It was perfect camouflage.
Speaker 1: That is wild. It's like trying to spot a specific
Speaker 1: piece of gray confetti falling against a massive mosaic tile floor.
Speaker 1: You'd never see it unless it moved across the tiles.
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. But then you
Speaker 2: have to add a third, incredibly bizarre element into this
Speaker 2: psychological trap, the phantom plane.
Speaker 1: The phantom plane. Okay, tell me about this.
Speaker 2: When investigators listened to the cockpit voice recorder tape, they
Speaker 2: heard the captain say, about thirty five seconds before the crash,
Speaker 2: I saw him about one point zero probably behind us now.
Speaker 2: And then shortly after he spots another plane flying the
Speaker 2: opposite way and says, there's one underneath.
Speaker 1: But wait, the NTSB plotted the radar right and the
Speaker 1: Cessna was never at their one point zero position. It
Speaker 1: was always out their front left window, near their eleven
Speaker 1: point zero zero position. So what plane was the captain
Speaker 1: actually looking at?
Speaker 2: That was the big question. So investigators canvassed in the
Speaker 2: neighborhoods and collected over two hundred witness reports from people
Speaker 2: on the ground and sixteen of those witnesses reported seeing
Speaker 2: other completely unidentified aircraft in the immediate area at that exact.
Speaker 1: Time, because back in nineteen seventy eight, a lot of
Speaker 1: small private planes didn't even carry transponders, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: ping the air traffic control radar at all. They were
Speaker 1: essentially ghosts to the system exactly.
Speaker 2: So the crew likely spotted a completely different untranspondered plane,
Speaker 2: assumed it was the sessena of the controller had warned
Speaker 2: them about, mentally checked it off there to do list,
Speaker 2: and just thought the sky ahead was clear.
Speaker 1: Man, it's just this tragical alignment of visual and mental illusions.
Speaker 1: But the NTSB wasn't satisfied with just that, were they No.
Speaker 2: They weren't. They went further into those one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy seconds of visibility by setting up an actual physical
Speaker 2: recreation in a hangar, and that led to a massive
Speaker 2: discovery about the physical mechanics of the cockpit itself, right.
Speaker 1: Because aircraft manufacturers design cockpits with something called a design
Speaker 1: eye reference point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very specific setup.
Speaker 1: It's this system of little balls mounted on the center
Speaker 1: post of the windshield, and a pilot is supposed to
Speaker 1: raise or lower their seat until their vision perfectly aligns
Speaker 1: with those balls. It ensures their eyes are in the
Speaker 1: optimal viewing position, providing the exact site lines the engineers
Speaker 1: originally intended.
Speaker 2: The issue, though, is that using this reference point wasn't
Speaker 2: strictly enforced at all. Pilots obviously come in all different
Speaker 2: heights and builds, and once they're up in the air,
Speaker 2: many pilots will just adjust the seats down.
Speaker 1: Why just for comfort?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sitting lower is often a lot more comfortable for
Speaker 2: their lower backs, and it actually gives them a much
Speaker 2: better straight on view of the complex instrument panels rate
Speaker 2: inside the cockpit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's basically the aviation equivalent of adjusting your
Speaker 1: car seats so far back and low to get comfortable
Speaker 1: on a long road trip that you unknowingly create this
Speaker 1: massive blind spot right over your own hood. Except you know,
Speaker 1: on a Boeing seven twenty seven, the hood is the
Speaker 1: long nose of a ninety one ton jetliner.
Speaker 2: Exactly. So, the NTSB investigators placed panoramic cameras in the
Speaker 2: cockpit of a seven to twenty seven inside a hangar,
Speaker 2: and they lowered the captain's seat to a typical comfortable
Speaker 2: setting just a few inches down and what happened. The
Speaker 2: results were devastating. Those one hundred and seventy seconds of
Speaker 2: clear visibility we talked about they instantly vanished. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it shranked down to just five to ten seconds because
Speaker 2: a seven twenty seven flies with a slightly nose up
Speaker 2: pitch during its descent. Dropping the seat just a few
Speaker 2: inches meant the tiny Sessena was entirely obscured by the
Speaker 2: nose of the jet for almost the entire approach.
Speaker 1: So by the time the Sessina was close enough to
Speaker 1: actually see, the pilots would have had to physically unbuckle
Speaker 1: their seat belts and lean way forward over the steering
Speaker 1: yoke just to spot it.
Speaker 2: They were fundamentally blind to the hazard directly in front
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: But wait, if the pilots couldn't physically see the Sessna,
Speaker 1: why didn't the air traffic controllers on the ground intervene.
Speaker 1: I mean they had the radar screens. They were supposed
Speaker 1: to be the ultimate safety net.
Speaker 2: Well, this introduced is a concept that still plagues complex
Speaker 2: systems to this day, and that is alarm fatigue.
Speaker 1: Alarm fatigue. Okay, how did that play into this.
Speaker 2: The approach control facility, which was the one handling the
Speaker 2: broader regional airspace before planes were handed off to the
Speaker 2: local airport tower, they had recently installed a brand new,
Speaker 2: state of the art collision alert system and did it work.
Speaker 2: It actually worked perfectly. That morning, the computer calculated the
Speaker 2: closure rate between the seven twenty seven and the Sessna,
Speaker 2: and a loud alarm went off in the control room,
Speaker 2: warning of an imminent strike.
Speaker 1: Wait, really, how does an air traffic controller just ignore
Speaker 1: a blaring collision alarm?
Speaker 2: Because that specific system was so highly sensitive, it was
Speaker 2: generating an average of thirteen false alarms every single day.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's the car alarm effect. Like when you live
Speaker 1: in a busy city and you hear a car alarm
Speaker 1: going off down the street. You don't jump up and
Speaker 1: call the police. You just assume it's malfunctioning or someone
Speaker 1: bump the bumper. You completely tune it out.
Speaker 2: Exactly. The approach controller did actually notice the alert, and
Speaker 2: he even mentioned it to a supervisor. Yeah, but because
Speaker 2: the system cried wolf so often, and because the PSA
Speaker 2: crew had previously confirmed they had the sessinin sight, the
Speaker 2: controllers just disregarded the computer.
Speaker 1: They figured the pilots had it covered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they assumed the pilots were handling it under visual
Speaker 2: flight rules.
Speaker 1: So the approach center hands the jet off to the
Speaker 1: Lindberg local tower controller for the final landing approach, and
Speaker 1: this leads us right into the final excruciating seventy seconds
Speaker 1: of the flight. The cockpit voice recorder reveals a highly
Speaker 1: distracted crew at this point. They are chatting casually, adjusting flaps,
Speaker 1: lowering the landing gear. The workload in the hawkpit is
Speaker 1: really high.
Speaker 2: It's a very busy phase of flight.
Speaker 1: But the captain, seemingly unsure of where the Sessna actually
Speaker 1: is at this moment, gets on the radio with the
Speaker 1: tower controller to check in, and.
Speaker 2: The transcript of this specific exchange is just haunting. The
Speaker 2: PSA captain keys the microphone and says, I think he's
Speaker 2: passed off to our right.
Speaker 1: He uses the word past passed past tense, meaning Sessna's
Speaker 1: behind us. Our interaction is completely over right.
Speaker 2: But when the investigators listened to the corresponding recording from
Speaker 2: the control tower on the ground, they found something awful.
Speaker 2: A burst of routine radio static hits the frequency at
Speaker 2: the exact millisecond, the captain speaks, oh no, So what
Speaker 2: the tower controller actually heard in his headset was I
Speaker 2: think he's passing off.
Speaker 1: To our right, passing pasig present tense. A single syllable
Speaker 1: altered by static changes the entire meaning of the transmission,
Speaker 1: because if the controller hears pass past tense and looks
Speaker 1: at his radar screen and sees the two planes are merging,
Speaker 1: he knows instantly the pilot has lost sight of the
Speaker 1: target right and he would order an immediate evasive turn exactly.
Speaker 2: But by hearing the word passing, the controller interprets the
Speaker 2: transmission as just a routine status update.
Speaker 1: Because it implies the pilot still has active visual eyes
Speaker 1: on the Cessna and is deliberately managing the physical gap
Speaker 1: between them.
Speaker 2: Right. It sounded to the ground like the crew was
Speaker 2: in total control of the situation.
Speaker 1: So because of that one misheard syllable, the controller assumed
Speaker 1: everything was fine and just stayed silent, and moments later
Speaker 1: the planes collided.
Speaker 2: It's just brutal. When the NTSB released their final report
Speaker 2: in the spring of nineteen seventy nine, they obviously had
Speaker 2: to assign fault for the tragedy, and the primary cause
Speaker 2: was placed squarely on the shoulders of the PSA crew.
Speaker 1: I mean legally, that makes sense because they accepted visual
Speaker 1: separation early on. Once they said they had the traffic
Speaker 1: in sight, they took full legal ownership of avoiding it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their critical failure was not explicitly and urgently telling
Speaker 2: air traffic Control the very second they lost visual cass
Speaker 2: contact with the Cessna instead of just asking for help,
Speaker 2: they assumed they had passed it.
Speaker 1: But the NTSB report distributed the blame across the whole system, too,
Speaker 1: didn't it.
Speaker 2: They did. The Cessna pilot contributed by failing to maintain
Speaker 2: his assigned heading while under the hood. Air traffic control
Speaker 2: contributed by failing to provide specific radar vectors to keep
Speaker 2: the aircraft physically separated, and of course, for allowing alarm
Speaker 2: fatigue to override a legitimate computer warning.
Speaker 1: It really was a perfect storm of tiny, incredibly human errors.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have a student struggling with spatial disorientation,
Speaker 1: a veteran captain lowering his seat just a bit for comfort,
Speaker 1: human eyes failing to detect a static object against a
Speaker 1: busy background, controllers numbed by false alarms, and literally a
Speaker 1: microsecond of radiostatic altering.
Speaker 2: A critical word, Every single layer of the safety net
Speaker 2: had a tiny hole in it, and on that morning
Speaker 2: in September, all those holes perfectly aligned.
Speaker 1: So why does a tragedy from nineteen seventy eight matter
Speaker 1: to you listening to the steep Dive today? It matters
Speaker 1: because the safety you experience every time you step onto
Speaker 1: a commercial flight was bought and paid for by the
Speaker 1: lives lost in San Diego. The rules of modern aviation
Speaker 1: are quite literally written in blood.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The industry shifts following Flight one eighty two were
Speaker 2: immediate and sweeping. First, the FAA completely overhauled airspace restrictions
Speaker 2: around busy airports, creating terminal control areas.
Speaker 1: So no more first come first surf free for all exactly.
Speaker 2: They abolished that chaotic visual free for all. Today, if
Speaker 2: an aircraft wants to fly anywhere near a major commercial airport,
Speaker 2: it must adhere to incredibly strict radar controlled corridors, no exceptions.
Speaker 1: And it also fundamentally changed how pilots behave inside the cockpit.
Speaker 1: Right The FAA introduced the sterile cockpit roll.
Speaker 2: Yes whenever an aircraft is operating below ten thousand feet,
Speaker 2: which covers the critical phases of takeoff and landing. All
Speaker 2: non essential conversation is strictly banned by federal.
Speaker 1: Law, so they can't just be chatting about their weekend.
Speaker 2: Nope, the crew must be entirely focused on flying the airplane.
Speaker 2: The casual laid back chatting that the PSA crew was
Speaker 2: engaging in while configuring their landing gear is completely illegal today.
Speaker 1: But the most vital legacy of this crash was a
Speaker 1: massive technological leap. It forced the development of an entirely
Speaker 1: new electronics safety net.
Speaker 2: Right by nineteen eighty one, which is just three years
Speaker 2: after the disaster, the FAA mandated the development of TCS,
Speaker 2: the Traffic Collision Avoidance System, and it's a technology that
Speaker 2: completely removes the reliance on the human eye and ground
Speaker 2: based radar.
Speaker 1: How does it work.
Speaker 2: Basically, the transponders on different aircraft actively ping each other.
Speaker 1: In the sky, so the planes are literally talking to
Speaker 1: each other, totally independent of air traffic control on the ground.
Speaker 2: Exactly, the computers on board calculate the speed, the altitude,
Speaker 2: and the closure rate of the planes around them. If
Speaker 2: two planes are on a collision course, TCS doesn't just
Speaker 2: sound an alarm that a pilot can ignore. It physically
Speaker 2: commands the pilots on exactly how to avoid each other.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, we'll tell one pilot to climb, climb time,
Speaker 2: and simultaneously tell the other pilot in the other plane
Speaker 2: to descend, descend.
Speaker 1: And that technology is installed on every single commercial passenger
Speaker 1: jet flying today. It is essentially this unblinking, infallible eye
Speaker 1: that doesn't suffer from visual illusions or radiostatic.
Speaker 2: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: So the next time you're sitting on the tarmac, maybe
Speaker 1: feeling frustrated by a minor delay, or noticing the flight
Speaker 1: attendants and pilots being incredibly rigid and silent during descent,
Speaker 1: just remember the San Diego Sky in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Every single rigid procedure keeping you safe today is the
Speaker 1: direct result of investigators piecing together a horrifying puzzle to
Speaker 1: ensure those exact human errors in every weapon.
Speaker 2: Again, yeah, the rules and restrictions aren't there to inconvenience passengers.
Speaker 2: They are the accumulated memory of past tragedies, actively working
Speaker 2: in the background to keep the sky quiet.
Speaker 1: Which leaves us with something really critical to think about.
Speaker 1: As we wrap up, we solve the specific problems of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight by taking control out of human hands
Speaker 1: and giving it to automated systems like tctts. But as
Speaker 1: we move into this new era where artificial intelligence and
Speaker 1: complex algorithms are essentially copiloting our flights and managing our airspace,
Speaker 1: are we truly eliminating human error or are we just
Speaker 1: building a vastly more complicated version of alarm fatigue, setting
Speaker 1: up a brand new type of blind spot that we
Speaker 1: haven't even discovered yet. Something to chew on until next time.
Speaker 1: Keep digging