1986 Cerritos mid-air collision

Aircraft

The larger aircraft involved, tail number XA-JED, was delivered in 1969 to Delta Air Lines as N1272L before entering into service with Aeromexico in 1979. It was a Douglas DC-9-32 en route from Mexico City, Mexico to Los Angeles International Airport (with intermediate stops in Guadalajara, Loreto, and Tijuana). N4891F was a privately operated Piper PA-28-181 Archer owned by the Kramer family which was en route from Torrance to Big Bear City, California. The Piper aircraft, N4891F, with pilot William Kramer (age 53) and two passengers aboard, had departed Torrance, California, at about 11:40 PDT. Kramer had 231 flight hours.

The cockpit crew of Flight 498 consisted of Captain Antonio Valdez-Prom, age 46, and First Officer Jose Valencia, age 26. The captain had 4,632 hours' flying experience in the DC-9 (technically referred to in an accident report as "in-type") and a total of 10,641 flight hours. The first officer had flown 1,463 hours in total, of which 1,245 hours had been accumulated in-type.

Collision and crash

At about 11:46 AM, Flight 498 began its initial descent into Los Angeles with 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. At 11:52 AM, the Piper's engine collided with the left horizontal stabilizer of the DC-9, shearing off the top of the Piper's cockpit and decapitating Kramer and both of his passengers. The heavily damaged Piper fell onto an empty playground at Cerritos Elementary School, at these coordinates: 33°51′55.76″N 118°2′23.97″W

Simultaneously, the DC-9, with most of its vertical and all of its horizontal stabilizer torn off, inverted, immediately dived, and slammed into a residential neighborhood at Holmes Avenue and Reva Circle in Cerritos, crashing into a house at what is now today 17914 Holmes Avenue, and exploded on impact. The explosion scattered the DC-9's wreckage across Holmes Avenue and onto Carmenita Road, destroying four other houses and damaging seven more. killing all 64 passengers and crew aboard the jetliner and 15 people on the ground. A fire sparked by the crash contributed significantly to the damage.

When the air traffic controller assigned to Flight 498 saw the plane vanish from his radar screen, he called up an inbound American Airlines MD-83 for assistance. The pilot on the passing plane replied that he saw a large smoke plume off to his left, indicating that Flight 498 had crashed.

Breakdown of casualties in the DC-9

Thirty-six of the passengers were citizens of the United States. Of the Mexican citizens, 11 lived in the United States and 9 lived in Mexico. The Salvadoran citizen lived in the Bay Shore area of the Town of Islip, New York, U.S. Ten of the passengers were children.

Of the passengers and crew on the Tijuana-Los Angeles leg:

• 2 passenger and 6 crew member boarded in Mexico City
• 6 boarded in Guadalajara
• 31 boarded at Loreto Airport
• 19 boarded in Tijuana

Investigation and aftermath

The National Transportation Safety Board investigation found that the Piper had entered the Los Angeles Terminal Control Area airspace without the required clearance. The TCA included a triangular slab of airspace from 6000 ft to 7000 ft altitude reaching south to 33.714N 118.007W, across the Piper's intended flight path; the Piper could legally fly beneath this airspace without contacting ATC, but instead climbed into it. The air traffic controller had also been distracted by another unauthorised private flight — a Grumman AA-5 Tiger — entering the TCA directly north of the airfield, that also did not have clearance.

The Piper was not (and was not then required to be) equipped with a Mode C transponder, which would have indicated its altitude, and LAX had not been equipped with automatic warning systems. Apparently neither pilot sighted the other aircraft because neither attempted any evasive maneuvers, even though they were in visual range. When an autopsy revealed significant arterial blockage in the heart of the Piper's pilot, there was public speculation that Kramer had suffered a heart attack, causing incapacitation and contributing to the collision; further forensic evidence discounted this, and error on Kramer's part was determined to be the main contributing factor to the collision.

As a result of this accident and other near mid-air collisions (NMAC) in terminal control areas, the Federal Aviation Administration required that all jets in US airspace be equipped with a Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), and required that light aircraft operating in dense airspaces be equipped with Mode C transponders which can report their altitude.

A jury ruled that the DC-9 bore no fault, instead deciding that Kramer and the FAA each acted equally negligently and had equal responsibility. U.S. District Judge David Kenyon agreed with the notion that the FAA shared responsibility. Federal Air Regulations 14 CFR 91.113 (b) require pilots of all aircraft to maintain vigilance to "see and avoid" other aircraft which might be on conflicting flight paths. The relative positions of both aircraft at the moment of collision showed no sign of any attempt at avoidance maneuvering by either aircraft.

One of the lawsuits involving victims on the ground saw the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit apply the Supreme Court of California's ruling in Thing v. La Chusa to extend recovery for negligent infliction of emotional distress to Theresa Estrada, whose husband and two of her three children were among the 15 on the ground killed in the crash. Although she did not witness the crash (which was a major requirement for recovery under Thing), she returned minutes after the crash to witness the home consumed by post-crash fires and surrounded by burning homes, cars, and aircraft debris. In a separate trial on damages, the Estrada family was awarded a total of $868,263 in economic damages and $4.7 million in non-economic damages, including $1 million for the negligent infliction of emotional distress.

The flight number has recently been put back into service.

Dramatization

This crash was featured in the April 24, 2007 episode of the television show Mayday titled "Out of Sight" in the original and Air Emergency versions and "Collision over LA" in the Air Crash Investigation version.

It also featured on UK television channel "Quest" on 16 July 2014.

The program Plane Crashes That Changed Flying linked the advance of automatic collision warning and avoidance systems to various aircraft disasters, including the Cerritos collision.

The Breaking Bad episode "ABQ" features a similar collision between two aircraft; the main character in the story, Walter White, is indirectly responsible for the crash. Walter White was also the name of the junior air traffic controller who was guiding the DC-9 prior to the Cerritos crash.

Memorial

On March 11, 2006, the City of Cerritos dedicated a new sculpture garden featuring a memorial to the victims of the accident. The sculpture, designed by Kathleen Caricof, consists of three pieces. One piece, which resembles a wing, commemorates all the victims who perished aboard the Aeroméxico jet and the Piper. A similar, but smaller and darker wing, commemorates all the victims who perished on the ground. Each wing rests on a pedestal that lists the respective victims in alphabetical order. In front of the memorial lies a bench, which commemorates all victims and allows visitors to sit and reflect on the disaster.