Latest / Aviation Survival Stories
When a Missing Transponder Turned Daylight Into Disaster
When a Missing Transponder Turned Daylight Into Disaster
The morning was clear and a private Piper without a Mode C transponder climbed into the same sky as a fully crewed Aeroméxico DC-9; eighty-two people would die when the two aircraft collided over Cerritos. How did a legal equipment gap and a distracted controller allow a blip with no altitude to vanish into a descent path and destroy four houses in seconds?
In this episode, we present the sequence of events, the aircraft and people involved, and the regulatory context that allowed an untransponded airplane to enter protected airspace -…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.