10 Years and Many Nightmares Later : Safety in Skies Said to Be Much Improved Since Disaster

Ten years ago, pilots flying single-engine airplanes zipped over San Diego’s only commercial airport with nothing more than an obligatory call to the control tower. On the same runway on which jets touched down from cross-continental trips, small planes practiced instrument landings--maneuvers that called for them to test their monitors by dipping close to the pavement before pulling up sharply into the sky.

“The system worked fine because everyone understood it and worked within it,” said Robert A. Vaughn, air traffic manager of the San Diego region of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Then came the fiery midair collision over North Park on Sept. 25, 1978. The tragedy guaranteed that the skies over San Diego would never be the same again.

An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board blamed the crash on the PSA jet crew for not maintaining adequate clearance from other planes and for not telling the FAA tower that it did not have in sight the planes it had warned about. In addition, the transportation board cited as deficient the FAA’s visual separation procedures used for San Diego airspace.

The accident also touched off public cries for finding another place for a commercial airport, although Lindbergh’s location was never cited as a reason for the crash.

Pressed by the public uproar, FAA and airport officials instituted a number of changes aimed at reducing aviation congestion around Lindbergh, primarily keeping general aviation aircraft out of the way of the descending jets.

The result, said Vaughn, is that “safety in the skies in San Diego since 1978 has improved significantly.”

The changes include:

- Terminal Control Area. Before the crash, there was no requirement for an aircraft to secure permission to fly near or around the airport. All a pilot had to do was radio his position into the control tower if he was flying below 3,000 feet and within 5 miles of the Lindbergh runway. The tower then relayed the information to other pilots, who were responsible for keeping an eye out for one another under the visual separation procedures.

Immediately after the crash, however, the FAA scrambled to find a way to clear the air lane coming into Lindbergh. By May, 1980, the agency imposed a terminal control area (TCA) leading to the airport. The sophisticated system requires that all aircraft flying at certain altitudes to the east or northwest of San Diego be under the direction

of air traffic controllers on the ground, eliminating visual separation as an option.

The TCA is an air lane that, viewed from the side, resembles an upside-down wedding cake, with its floor descending in steps to the ground the closer it gets to Lindbergh. All aircraft entering the space must be under positive air traffic control, which eliminates the potential for the type of accident that occurred in 1978.

A terminal control area was also put in place for military aircraft flying into Miramar, said Vaughn.

- Instrument Landings. At the time of the PSA crash, small aircraft were allowed to practice instrument landings at Lindbergh, although ground equipment for the maneuvers had been installed at Palomar Airport in Carlsbad and Gillespie Field in El Cajon.

After the accident, however, the practice was halted. In 1979, the FAA effectively drew the small aircraft away from Lindbergh by installing ground equipment for the landings at nearby Montgomery Field in Kearny Mesa. In 1980, Lindbergh airport management issued an order prohibiting practice instrument landings or other “touch-and-go” operations at the inner-city field.

“Most general aviation pilots don’t want to mix it up with jets, either,” said Vaughn. “Given a chance to do it elsewhere, most pilots will. And they did.”

- Enhanced Radar. The year after the crash, the FAA spent about $150,000 to upgrade the radar screen in the Lindbergh control tower with an “alpha-numeric” readout showing each plane’s flight number, altitude and speed of in-coming aircraft. Before the crash, the radar just displayed the planes as blips on the screen.

- Visual Omni Range. A device that sprays radio signals in all directions, the Visual Omni Range (VOR) is used by general aviation planes to help feel their way along in the sky if they can’t see the ground. It provides a sort of radio home base for small aircraft, who inevitably seem drawn to the VOR’s vicinity.

In 1978, the primary VOR was in Mission Bay, near Lindbergh. After the crash, the FAA decided to add another VOR unit just north of Brown Field. The idea, said Vaughn, was to draw more of the general aviation traffic to the southeast and away from Lindbergh Field.

Since FAA and airport officials instituted changes, general aviation traffic at Lindbergh has dropped off drastically.

Contacts between the airport’s tower and small planes dropped from 107,860 the year of the crash to 48,978 in 1980. Last year, they were down to 25,336.