Where PSA Flight 182 Crashed in San Diego in 1978

um okay we'll call you quickly so welcome to this episode of history hunters i'm at the corner of dwight and isle street in san diego and i'm here because this is the site of one of the worst air disasters in american history it was psa flight 182 on september 25th 1978 a massive passenger airliner crashed right in this intersection and i'll tell you all about it on this episode of history hunters monday september 25th 1978 was a beautiful sunny day in california with its characteristic smiley face painted on his fuselage a 10 year old boeing 727 commercial airliner owned by pacific southwest airlines or psa took off from sacramento headed for southern california the first lake would land in los angeles and continue on to lindbergh field in san diego at 8 34 a.m all went smoothly until the airliner entered the san diego airspace and air traffic controllers alerted the pilots to watch out for a small plane a cessna 172 skyhawk with two pilots aboard one of whom was practicing instrument landing system approaches the cessna had departed from montgomery field and was navigating under visual flight rules which did not require the filing of a flight plan the pilots of the 727 had difficulty spotting the small plane and at one point the flight crew believed that the cessna had shot past it a psa captain radioed i think he's passed off to our right however due to radio static the lindbergh tower heard he's passing off to our right instead the cessna was right in front of them flight 182 was cleared to land at lindbergh over three miles away seconds later at 9 01 a.m as the plane descended to 2 600 feet in its approach the cessna slammed into the right wing of the aircraft crippling an engine and the wing as the wounded 727 banked into a death spiral 22 seconds of sheer panic followed for the 135 souls aboard within seconds the residential area of north park would be rocked by a horrific fireball meanwhile the damaged cessna carried two to their deaths blocks nearby that was somewhere over to the north of us that the psa flight crashed with a cessna there was a student pilot the plane first hit the house that was previously constructed here so as it came down the wing was tipping to the right if you can imagine this giant airliner was coming right down through here tip down hit this house continue to slide in this direction with the entire plane coming down to crash right in this section here with fuel and metal and human bodies hitting this area and sliding right through this corner and making its way right through here this entire street wasn't just major carnage i understand that 22 structures were either burned or destroyed when this plane crashed right here this whole block was decimated this entire street was covered in plain parts wings engines every house that was here was just demolished so everything that you see here was built since 1978 so there were 135 souls aboard the air crash resulted in a total of 144 deaths including the two on the cessna including everybody on board the pilots the psa crew and there were seven individuals here on the ground who were also killed when their houses were slammed by this massive airplane i understand that the noise was so horrific that hardly anybody could believe i mean if you can imagine a massive airliner coming down into a residential neighborhood this was it this was a spot there's some indications that the crew was trying to land the plane on the nearby freeway over there but uh they had no control of the airplane the cessna actually struck the right wing of the plane rendering it completely inoperable the plane was trying to land over at lindbergh field it's kind of a difficult airport to land at but i believe that the uh the disaster was bounded here by boundary street [Music] tell him to get the knife now i did read some reports that said that there were body parts strewn everywhere that one kid came down here on his bicycle and he saw a torso of a woman on a roof of one of the nearby houses the rest of her body in the yard of the house so this would have been this house here was probably also in the line of fire as well and these houses here were built after the crash because everything here was demolished i would imagine this house here on boundary street saw the disaster the police actually shut down this site for a year as they cleaned cleaned up the debris the environmental hazard and the body parts i certainly remember this incident because i was a junior in high school and i remember tuning in to the news and seeing those pictures of this plane going down in flames and having flown on a plane of course you kind of put yourself in the position what were these people thinking when that plane went down it must have been just a horrific ending to their life to know that they would all perish once they hit the ground here [Applause] now the families and some in the community are trying to establish a permanent memorial here at this spot to commemorate the lives of everybody who perished but that hasn't happened yet i'm not sure why it's been over 40 years since the incident happened 1978. what is that 43 44 years [Applause] [Music] i don't think there's too many buildings on this side of the street that were here at the time have remained but some of them are that old white house over there looks like a little bit like a castle but uh it was here at the time as well it's hard to imagine the carnage that took place here on that morning i remember tuning in to tv at that time and just seeing the smoke and the fire and thought my god the people on the ground what they must have endured as well so the crash site being right here and this is what gives people the idea that the pilots were trying to land on the freeway is that dwight and nile streets with a plane hit is just what half a block from the freeway over here [Music] i understand that the pilots were pretty calm when that plane went down they were saying this is it or here we go and one of the pilots the last communication from that plane was lovey moth so yeah right down there here's the end of the street and the freeway is just down there so yeah it's very plausible but that that those pilots were trying to land a plane right on the freeway instead of on people's houses what a horrible event i happen to think that it is more than fitting to establish a memorial here for those who lost their lives here now the cessna landed about six blocks to the north and i'll try to find that place as well so the other part of the tragedy on september 25th 1978 was the fact that two people aboard a cessna crash landed and were killed in the street now that cessna landed right here on polk avenue just west of 32nd street right here that's exactly where the plane landed in the street killing two people on board right here this house looks pretty much the same some additions had have been taken place since 1978 but most of the wreckage of the plane landed right here uh the future ledge landed here there were other parts of the plane that broke up and uh were scattered across several acres of property here but right here at 3178 polk street that's where that cessna went down we're about six seven blocks north of the crash site and again we're very close to the freeway they say the accident was blamed on three parties the air controllers were not kind of keeping the task on keeping that cessna away from that jet liner and then the crew said that they thought that the cessna actually passed by him to the right that wasn't the case of course the cessna was right in front of him and then the cessna pilot was being trained he was being instrument trained at a major airport that has since stopped but they had him set for a course that they did not follow and if they had followed it there would not have been a mid-air collision that would have resulted in so many deaths that day but i want to thank you so much for joining us on this sad episode of history hunters we hope that we're not afraid to fly in airplanes because of it we would ask you give us a comment and a like and always subscribe to our channel thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: History Hunters

Views: 125,978

Rating: 4.9227252 out of 5

Keywords: PSA Flight 182, San Diego airplane crash, History Hunters, jbenziggy

Id: ja-hDQzyC6U

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021