As Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 took a 19-second plunge to the ground after colliding in mid-air with a Cessna, the 727’s captain warned over the cabin intercom, “Brace yourself!” Seconds later, the plane smashed into a San Diego neighborhood nose first, instantly killing all 135 on board and seven people on the ground.

In retrospect, it’s amazing the pilot had the presence of mind to think about the passengers at that point. A few seconds earlier, he’d matter-of-factly radioed air traffic control, saying, “Tower, we’re going down. This is PSA.”

The 1978 crash (which also killed both occupants of the Cessna), was attributed partly to error by the 727’s crew, who’d failed to inform controllers they’d lost sight of the Cessna. Other contributing factors included errors by the controller and by the pilots of the Cessna (who’d deviated from their expected flight path).

An alert professional photographer who was taking photos of an event at a nearby service station heard the collision and snapped a couple pictures of the 727 diving to the ground. The second photo was taken a few seconds after the first.

One of the most famous plane crashes in the United States was the crash of United Airlines Flight 232. United Airlines Flight 232 was a DC-10 flying from Denver to Chicago O Hare. When the aircraft was at its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet, a fan blade in the No.2 engine broke, causing an uncontained engine failure. In short, an uncontained engine failure is when the engine failure causes damage to the outer components of the engine. Usually, an uncontained engine failure causes said engine to explode. On this flight, the uncontained failure ruptured all three hydraulic lines which ran near the No.2 engine on the DC-10. When the hydraulics were ruptured, this caused the aircraft to become uncontrollable. Basic flight control features such as pitch, roll, yaw, etc were impossible. In fact, the only thing working for the flight crew were the engines. Imagine trying to fly an airplane using purely engine power.

The three pilots, Captain Al Haynes, First Officer Bill Records, and Flight Engineer Dudley Dvorak, struggled to steer the plane using only engine power, juggling the throttles to make the asymmetric thrust turn the plane in a very slow wide right turn. It has been estimated that the odds of suffering such a complete systems failure are more than a billion to one. The odds of landing it safely? Don’t even get me started on that one. Because the plane couldn’t use its ailerons, elevators, rudders, or any other major control surface, not only was it difficult to fly straight, but to turn, descend, line up with a runway, and land it at an appropriate sink rate and flare was damn near impossible. Japan Airlines Flight 123 was another such incident, and in that incident, the plane ended up flying into a mountain after the pilots held on for 33 harrowing minutes.

Anyhow, the flight crew enlisted the help of a DC-10 instructor, Denny Fitch, who also had no clue. Fitch helped with the throttles and essentially became a member of the crew. Obviously, the passengers had some inkling as to what was happening, but because the aviators code is “Aviate, navigate, and communicate,” an announcement to the passengers only happened just a few minutes before landing in Sioux City. In his announcement, Captain Haynes said,

“ LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS IS CAPTAIN AL HAYNES SPEAKING. AS YOU MUST BE AWARE BY NOW, WE’RE HAVING SOME CONTROL DIFFICULTIES WITH THE PLANE. WE’RE ATTEMPTING AN EMERGENCY LANDING IN SIOUX CITY. WE’LL BE LANDING IN APPROXIMATELY EIGHT MINUTES. WE’VE GOT ABOUT AS MUCH CONTROL OVER THE PLANE AS WE CAN GET, BUT I NEED YOU TO UNDERSTAND THIS IS GOING TO BE A CRASH LANDING. PLEASE REVIEW YOUR EMERGENCY PROCEDURES. THIS IS GOING TO BE WORSE THAN ANYTHING YOU’VE EVER BEEN THROUGH BEFORE, AND YOU NEED TO BE READY. WE WILL DO EVERYTHING IN OUR POWER TO GET EVERYONE TO THE GROUND, BUT WE NEED YOUR COOPERATION.”

Obviously he wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything. Here he was, flying a crippled airliner that had absolutely no control whatsoever, and he had 288 other poor souls sitting behind him. As the pilot-in-command, you are responsible ultimately for the outcome of the flight. So you want your passengers to be as equipped as possible to survive such a crash. So Captain Haynes made it clear what was going to happen, to mentally prepare his passengers for the inevitable. Although Captain Haynes was not able to land the plane without fatalities, his actions no doubt saved hundreds of lives that day.

In 2000 my wife and I along with my 10 & 12 year old children flew Spirit airlines non-stop from Detroit to Los Angeles for a Disney vacation. My daughter and I were in the bulkhead seats on one side of the aisle while my wife and son were in row 2 on the other side. 20 minutes into the flight we hear a loud bang and the plane immediately fills with a white cloud of vapor so thick we couldn’t see the person next to us. It wasn’t smoke because we didn’t cough though.

The pilot came on the intercom and said ‘Ladies & Gentlemen, we’ve obviously had a malfunction. The smoke will clear very quickly. (which it did). We will land at the closest airport which is Grand Rapids Michigan. Please hold on for more info.’

So, everybody is pretty calm for a couple of minutes until the stewardesses began the crash positions talk. I was very calm and reassured my daughter that everything would be fine. HOWEVER, from our seats in the front row we could see into the galley where the two most senior stewardesses were openly sobbing and praying over a Rosary.

Holy crap, this was serious.

A few minutes before landing the stewardesses began shouting as loud as they absolutely could ‘Heads Down’, ‘Emergency Position’. Non stop for 6 or 7 straight minutes. They were really serious. And clearly afraid. The pilot had never relayed anything other than a calm ‘no big deal’ demeanor.

It only took about 15 minutes for us to land smoothly on a runway in Ypsilanti Mich surrounded by fire trucks. Then the real problems began.

First off, I live in the Detroit area and just a few days prior to leaving there was a TV News segment on Spirit engine parts filling milk crates on peoples’ lawns in Detroit. two weeks earlier an engine had fallen off a jet, making the local news only, and Spirit never bothered to even retrieve the parts. Where the hell is the FAA? I didn’t pay too much attention to it because that only happens to other people.

During our nearly full day stranded I had the opportunity to speak with the pilot. I asked him how serious this had actually been. After all, I saw Airport. A jet can fly on one engine. Right? Apparently not. He told me that when an engine blows you’re landing in 10 to 15 minutes. Airport or not. Simple as that.

So, after nearly 24 hours delay and countless run-arounds by Spirit we got to California.

Fast forward to a week later at the airport waiting for our flight home. I began chatting up a Spirit worker in coveralls. He said he had flown down from wherever to check on a problem a jet had a week earlier. I told him that I was on that plane and asked what the story was. What he told me was the scariest thing I’ve ever heard about airlines.

He said that he was officially there to investigate ‘smoke in the cabin’. Everyone knew that an engine had exploded but they don’t put that in the paperwork because then the FAA would get involved. He flies down to LA verifies an ‘engine problem’ and flies back. Then Spirit can replace the engine as a part of routine maintenance without ever notifying the FAA. He said this is also exactly what had happened 3 weeks earlier in Detroit. That’s why nobody picked up the engine parts after they rained from the sky. In his view, that was also why the most dangerous airline flying had a great safety record.

So, the pilot doesn’t always relay the danger level and if you really want to know, keep an eye on the most senior stewards.

Edit(6/8/16)
For those who doubt that this event happened at all, here is a link to a small article in the San Diego news describing both the incident where engine parts fell from the sky over East Detroit and the one a few weeks later that I was on. It turns out that it was July of 2001 (not 2000) and while the pilot said we expected to land in Ypsilanti, we actually landed in Grand Rapids.
MI – Jet shuts down engine, makes emergency landing at Grand Rapids

I just found a picture of the Spirit flight in Grand Rapids right after we disembarked. The problem engine is shown along with a puddle of what appeared to be hydraulic fluid. I was able to turn around and snap it while we were walking to the terminal.

Back in 1989, Varig Flight 254 (Boeing 737–200) ended up with no fuel above the Amazon Forest due to a series of piloting errors.

In the final moments before landing in the jungle, the pilot said:

“Ladies and gentleman, this is the captain speaking. We had a disorientation failure in our compass systems. We are about to run out of fuel, having 15 minutes remaining. We ask you all to remain calm, because a situation like this is very unlikely to happen. We let you all have the hope that this doesn’t become anything more than a scare for us all. For your attention, thank you very much, and let us all have a good ending.”

It wasn’t very helpful in my opinion.

12 people died, 42 survived.