others on that flight. it's a big sky until two planes end up in the same place. >> climb. climb. >> at the same time. 37,000 feet above the amazon, a corporate jet collides with a 737. >> every atom in my body, i felt it kind of implode. >> one mile above new york city, a dc-8 tears into the fuselage of a lockheed constellation. >> bang.

i jumped up and i ran and i never looked back. >> over san diego, a 727 slams into a cessna and it's caught on film. >> i knew it was big, i knew it was bad, but we didn't know it was a plane crash. >> outside los angeles, a small plane smashes into a dc-9, decimating several homes below. >> it just smelled like death. like smoke and death. >> eyewitnesses and survivors tell their harrowing stories and dramatic animations put you right there with the troubled aircraft. the big sky just got a lot smaller. ♪ "why planes crash: collision

course." >> a new concept in air transportation. the trevail was taken out of travel. >> when this short film was released by pan am in 1958, flying was a special occasion. people got dressed up. people were served on white linen. >> delicious food adds to the enjoyment. >> we all know that's changed, but an even more significant change is the increase in air traffic. flying over the u.s. in 1960, there would have been about 1,400 planes in the sky at any given time. today, that number is more like 7,000. >> in 2011, we flew almost 3 billion people. we fly about the population of the earth every 24 months or so. and it's expected to grow. >> reporter: with such an

increase in volume worldwide, it seems there would be a greater risk of planes colliding in the sky. but technology is more sophisticated than ever, so these types of accidents are actually less frequent than in the earlier days of passenger jet travel. that doesn't mean midair collisions don't happen anymore, because sometimes technology fails, and it's nearly impossible to eliminate human factors. in 2006, this plays out with catastrophic consequences for two planes flying over the amazon. a boeing 737 and a private corporate jet. >> i had gone to brazil on an assignment for a magazine called "business jet traveler," to write about embraer, and while i

was there, i ran into some guys from a long island charter company who had just bought a brand new, $25 million airplane, a legacy 600. a real beauty, a mid-sized corporate jet. and they said, why don't you fly back with us? sure, okay. i'm in. and that turned out to be certainly the most fateful decision of my life. >> september 29th, 2006, 2:52 p.m. the legacy, tail number 600 x-ray lima takes off from san jose dos campos. destination, the city of manaus, nearly four hours to the northwest. air traffic control instructs the legacy to fly at 37,000 feet, where it levels off by 3:33 p.m. meanwhile, two minutes later, goal airlines flight 1907

departs manaus for the country's capital, brasilia in the south. within half an hour, the plane, a boeing 737 reaches its assigned cruising altitude, 37,000 feet. the 737 is heading southeast, the legacy is heading northwest. these two aircraft should be at different altitudes. instead, they're on a collision course. >> it was a beautiful day. puffy, white clouds in the sky, nothing obscuring our view and we took off for what was to be a routine flight. we were flying with very competent pilots in a brand-new airplane. what could be bad about that? >> both sets of pilots are in contact with air traffic control, operated by the brazilian air force. but starting at 4:02 p.m.,

northwest to brasilia, there's a problem. the legacy's radar data is no longer being received by air traffic control. >> at some point during the flight, the transponder, which provides altitude information to the controller, inadvertently disappeared. >> a transponder is critical. not only to relay key information to air traffic control and nearby planes, but also in order to enable tcas, the traffic alert and collision avoidance system, which warns pilots when another plane is too close. >> traffic. traffic. >> and advises preventative action. >> climb. climb. >> in addition to the missing transponder signal, which is preventing the legacy from sending its data, there's another problem. well-documented radio dead zones over the amazon. beginning at 4:26 p.m., air traffic control and the legacy pilots make several attempts to

verbally communicate, all unsuccessful. under normal circumstances, they would acknowledge each other's calls. >> brazilian air traffic control system, in its overall shoddy performance, had misprogrammed its own consoles, so it had given five radio frequencies for the area the pilots were in, four of which were in complete error. had nothing to do with that sector. unbelievable, right? but that's the way it was. >> even though air traffic control clears the legacy to fly at 37,000 feet, when one controller hands the plane off to his replacement at the end of his shift, he tells him, incorrectly, the plane is at 36,000 feet. in reality, the legacy and the 737 are at the same altitude, traveling at about 500 miles an hour apiece. that adds up to a closure or combined speed of

1,000 miles an hour. >> you are talking a lot of energy with aircraft that weigh thousands of pounds. so when they do collide at that high velocity, there is typically total destruction of the aircraft. >> by the time radio contact is made at 4:53 p.m., the connection is so bad, the legacy pilots and controller can't understand each other. the planes are closing in. >> everybody was sort of dozing or working. i hear and feel a bang! the loudest noise i've ever heard. i was in vietnam and i've heard bombs and just, bang! and every atom in my body, i felt, kind of implode. >> i've flown as a passenger a lot. you go through all kinds of weather and all kinds of turbulence, and i've never felt an impact like this before. >> because of the angle at which the planes collide, the 737, though much larger, takes a far worse hit than the legacy.

>> one of the wings, which has a winglet on it, actually sliced through the 737 wing. there was a lot of flight control systems that are damaged. it rendered the airplane incapacitated and uncontrollable, and as the 737 went out of control, of course, the aerodynamic forces actually caused it to start to break up in flight. >> everyone on board the legacy knows something bad has happened, but they don't know they've collided with another aircraft. they don't even know their plane is damaged, until joe sharkie looks out his window. >> i open my window shutter and look out, this is a sight i'll simply never forget. because i'm looking at the wing and part of it is missing. and it's a jagged bit of metal. >> they need on the ground and they need on the ground in a hurry. they need the first available airport. >> coming up, 35 heart-stopping

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september 29th, 2006, seven miles above the brazilian amazon, a 737 collides with an embraer legacy. it's a devastating accident. the 737 is rendered uncontrollable and plummets toward the ground. but the legacy is still in flight. its left winglet gone and horizontal stabilizer damaged. as the pilots struggle to fly the plane, no one on board knows there's been a midair collision. what they do know is they're in trouble.

>> to think that you may not see your family or that they're going to read about you and see about your death on tv and on the newspaper was -- it was a horrible thought. >> i wrote a note to my wife and figured, well, maybe they'll find the note. i said, "i love you. our time together has been golden, and, you know, i'm sorry i'm going to die. but i said nit a way that was nice. >> like most plane crashes, a series of events, not just one, led to the collision over brazil. two planes fly straight toward each other after air traffic control put them at the same altitude. radio black holes over the amazon limit communication between controllers and the legacy pilots. and for nearly one hour before the collision, the legacy's transponder doesn't transmit. so two controllers working back-to-back shifts don't receive its signals. >> a competent controller would

spot that within two or three sweeps. there's a sweep every second, -- ten seconds, within 20 or 30 seconds. this plane disappeared, in that sense, for 50, 5-0, minutes, not 20 or 30 seconds. >> within three minutes of the impact, the transponder is reactivated. but the legacy is now compromised. it needs to land soon. >> the longest 35 minutes i've ever spent in my life, you know, wondering, were we going to make it down safely, wondering with every turn, would they lose control of the airplane. >> the closest runway is a military base, literally an airstrip in the middle of the jungle. as the pilots desperately try to get the plane there, it's a white knuckle moment for everyone on board. >> we were within five minutes of not flying anymore. it was clear -- i mean, the trees were coming closer and closer. and i thought, well, here we go.

>> once safely on the ground, the passengers, still unaware how they got into this situation, are happy to be alive. but hours later, they learn they've been involved in a midair collision with a 737, that the jet crashed in the jungle, and 154 people perished and the mood quickly turns. >> i just sensed the change in the environment. and i knew that we were now being treated like criminal suspects. >> following the crash there are protests in brazil, with relatives of victims demanding more information about the crash. writer joe sharkie says much of the anger turns towards the american survivors. >> crazy rumors were starting to fly in brazil. among them was that at the time of the accident, because i, the reporter, was on board and it

was a brand-new plane, the two american pilots were flying loopty loops to show the plane off over the central amazon, causing the disaster. now, that's crazy. >> of course, when the plane's instruments were studied, it was clear the plane had been steady as a rock at 37,000 feet. >> joe sharkie is held in brazil for two days. the pilots, joe la pore and jan palladino are held for more than two months. when they're finally allowed to leave the country on december 9th, 2006, they receive a warm welcome back at their company headquarters in long island, new york. but the pilots' problems are far from over. nine months after the accident, the brazilian government indicts the american pilots, as well as four of its own air traffic controllers, for exposing an aircraft to danger. the international aviation

community has come out strongly against criminalizing accidents. >> we have to know what they were thinking, what decisions they were making, why they acted the way they did. and if there's a fear of going to jail and that punitive action against them, then that's going to inhibit the information that we as investigators get. >> the criminalization of aircraft accident investigations is an impediment to safety. >> in may 2011, a federal judge when you have situations where there's not a deliberate act, the key focus needs to be, let's not have a reoccurrence of it. >> in may 2011, a federal judge in brazil acquits the legacy pilots of all charges but one, negligence for not monitoring their transponder. the final terms of the sentence are pending, but it seems unlikely the pilots will serve jail time. joel weiss, attorney for the pilots, says they were never at fault because the transponder was on, but then, without

warning, his clients say, went off or into standby mode. >> we have all kinds of anecdotal evidence from all over the world, and particularly in europe, of this kind of transponder unit simply failing without any indication whatsoever in the cockpit that it had failed. >> components do fail. it is not that it is necessarily turned to standby, it's a failure. >> in brazil, one air traffic controller described by the judge as unqualified and incompetent, is acquitted. another controller is convicted of negligence. in its final report, cenipa, brazil's ntsb equivalent acknowledges the failures of the brazilian controllers as well as the legacy pilots, stating that both parties should have become aware of the loss of radio communication far sooner than they did. in an e-mail, cenipa's press office states their accident investigation does not establish responsibility or guilt but

identifies the contributing factors with the primary objective being prevention. if there's a lesson to be learned from this tragedy, it's that there will always be human factors that lead to accidents. >> the lack of transponder information for a period of time from the embrere plane it caused problems for situational awareness for the air traffic controller. whether you are military or civilian, it's the human soft and the human error that starts the sequence of events. when we come back, more midair collisions over two of america's biggest cities. >> i jumped up and i ran and i never looked back. in the nation, it's not always pretty.

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air traffic control system, the burden of maintaining separation between commercial aircraft fell mainly on pilots. they kept their distance using what's called visual flight rules, otherwise known as see and be seen. >> think of it as driving your car. you avoid traffic by seeing it and not putting your car where there's another car. the airplane works in visual flight rules the same way. >> see and be seen is a catastrophic failure in two deadly collisions between the same two airlines, twa and united. the first crash is over the grand canyon on june 30th, 1956. >> these two pilots were having to deviate around thunderstorms. they actually didn't know that when they came back around from the backside of the clouds, the other aircraft was there. >> the united dc-7 and twa lockheed constellation, or super-cony, collide at 21,000

feet. at the time it's the deadliest accident in aviation history. >> the tragic aftermath of saturday's twa/united airlines crash, which claims 128 lives. >> it was a watershed event. it was one of those accidents that we, as a society, said, we're not going to have that anymore. >> the collision prompts the federal aviation act of 1958, which creates the faa, whose mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world. unfortunately, change doesn't happen quickly enough. >> the wreckage went in to the church, in to the street and in to the surrounding buildings, but i imagine that was the first

contact with the ground, that garage. . >> it's a dreary december morning in 1960, when twa and united have another catastrophic incident. this time, over new york city. 10:25 a.m., air traffic control alters the route of united flight 826, a dc-8, shaving 11 miles off its path to new york's laguardia airport. 10:30 a.m., united is at 14,000 feet and cleared to descend to five. at the same moment, twa flight 266, a super-cony, like the one that crashed over the grand canyon, is headed to idlewild airport, known now as jfk. it's coming through 8,000 feet. united is told to head to a specific navigational fix or intersection, where it's to

enter a holding pattern and await further instructions, but there are problems. the plane has two navigational instruments used at the time to determine position. one of them isn't working. and the plane is also traveling more than 500 miles per hour, a speed later determined to be excessive and the dc-8 flies past its clearance. >> i would equate it to driving down a street. if you know where you are and you know the second left turn is the turn you need to make, that's great. but if you didn't see the first road to the left, you would drive beyond it because you didn't recognize the first cue. >> at 10:33 a.m., laguardia tower advises twa of traffic off to its right. no one realizes it, but the united dc-8 is heading straight for them. then seven seconds later, as

both planes approach 5,000, there's a brutal collision. one of the dc-8's engines tears through the fuselage of the super-cony. the twa plane breaks into pieces and goes down on the spot, crashing in staten island's miller airfield. but the united jet manages to stay aloft for 8 1/2 more miles, until it's over park slope, brooklyn, where tom regan, then 20 years old, is standing on the street. >> across the street at seventh avenue and sterling place, just stepping on the corner, when i heard a loud, loud whining. and when i turned around, the wing of the plane, united airlines, was catching into the roof of the building that i had just left. and there was a tremendous explosion.

immediately i dropped to the ground, and then moments after that, there was a second explosion. bang! just everything exploded. and now the whole place was on fire. i stayed on the ground for what i thought seemed to be a long time, but i believe it was only several seconds. and i jumped up and i ran and i never looked back. >> on the street in brooklyn, people are astounded to learn there's a single survivor, 11-year-old steven from illinois who's thrown from the united plane in to a snow bank. >> he had been given a christmas gift to fly from chicago to 0 new york and that's what happened. >> at the time, barbara lewnes is a recent nursing school graduate, working at methodist hospital, a few blocks from the crash site. she's assigned to care for steven overnight.

he's badly burned. >> i couldn't tell if he was white or black. he was just charcoal. i think they said it was 85% of his body. >> within hours, the boy's father arrives in new york and speaks to the press? >> mr. boss, how do you and mrs. boss feel about your son being the sole survivor? >> we have great heartfelt sympathy for all of the people who were not as fortunate. >> the country rallies behind steven, but his injuries are too grave. >> if i had been in nursing longer, i would have known there was no chance. but that's why i think they put me there. >> steven boss, our little 11-year-old boy, the lone survivor of the plane crash in brooklyn, expired at 1:00 p.m., just a few minutes ago. the little boy closed his eyes and went to sleep.

>> with the final death toll at 134, including six on the ground, the 1960 crash over park slope replaces the grand canyon collision as the deadliest u.s. commercial aviation disaster to that point. to investigate the accident, the civil aeronautics board, the forerunner to the ntsb, uses flight data recorder, or black box technology, for the first time ever. the conclusion, united flight 826 proceeded beyond its clearance limit, or the place it was told to go into a holding pattern. its high rate of speed and the change of clearance, or shortcut, it was given by air traffic control are contributing factors. within three months, president kennedy establishes project beacon, the task force is mandated to review the country's aviation facilities, and put together a long-range plan for the future of air traffic in the

u.s. but there are more mid-air problem s on the horizon. when we come back, deadly accidents between large planes and small. >> all of a sudden, you know, we hear this big -- this tremendous thud. salesperson #1: the real deal's the passat tdi clean diesel gets up to 795 highway miles per tank. salesperson #2: actually, we're throwing in a $1,000 fuel reward card. we've never done that. that's why there's never been a better time to buy a passat tdi clean diesel. husband: so it's like two deals in one? avo: during the salesperson #2: first ever exactly. volkswagen tdi clean diesel event, get a great deal on a passat tdi, that gets up to 795 highway miles per tank. and get a $1000 dollar fuel reward card. it's like two deals in one. hurry in and get a $1,000 fuel reward card and 0.9% apr for 60 months on tdi models.

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here's what is happening. the death toll has risen to four in a mud sflied washington state. officials say a body was found during efforts to locate survivors today. at least 18 people are still unaccounted for and conditions are making the search difficult. ten aircraft are being sent out to continue the search for a missing malaysian airlines jet. satellite information spotted objects in the area of the southern indian ocean but nothing has been found yet. now back to "why planes crash."

like building blocks, each midair collision has helped make the skies safer. so much safer, in fact, that according to an m.i.t. study, technology has advanced to the point where we can expect only one midair collision every 100 million flight hours. the last time two commercial jets collided over the u.s. was the 1960 accident above new york city. since then there have been three more midair collisions, all involving one large aircraft and one small. in 1967, mary schulte's father is at the helm of a piedmont airlines boeing 727, which collides with a twin cessna over north carolina, killing 82 people. >> two pilots show up at the front door, ring the doorbell,

and inform my mother that my father's plane had crashed. and i told him that couldn't be true, because he was the best pilot. >> the outgrowth of it was a very strong commitment by piedmont airlines to be involved in to the traffic collision avoidance system, and some years later they were one of the first frk, if not the first, airlines to fly with an active tcas system on board. >> six years later, betty barrett is on board a charter jet when it collides with a dc-9 over france. all 68 on the dc-9 perish. everyone on betty's plane survives. >> my father was sitting in the aisle seat, and i was sitting on the right-hand side, and i turned around and he's very british and very stoic, and i said, daddy, do you think we're going to make it? and he said, i rather doubt it, darling, and pointed to the other wing. somebody sent me this picture of when we landed.

and as you can see, the tires are all blown out and this is the broken wing here, you can see all this. and i was told afterwards, if we had lost one more meter of our wing, in other words, it ends here, then we would have blown up as well. i keep this always in my room to remind me that if you survive this, you can survive anything. >> then, in 1978 and 1986, there are two more midair collisions in the u.s. building on the accidents that preceded them, they force major change in the aviation industry. there are eerie similarities. both occur in broad daylight on picture-perfect days in southern california. the first, on september 25th, 1978, is caught on camera.

>> we heard a loud crash overhead and looked up to see part of a small cessna airplane spinning to the ground. then, suddenly, we heard a thunderous crash that sounded like a bomb hitting. >> no one knows it yet, but 17 seconds earlier, half a mile above them, the private plane has collided with a boeing 727. pacific southwest airlines psa, flight 182. >> you see it over there? >> come on, get in the car, see it? just take this! >> at the moment of impact, nbc channel 39 reporter john britton and his cameraman, steven howell, are covering a press conference just a few blocks away in the residential san diego neighborhood. >> john and i were on a standard news story. i'm shooting shots of gas station pumps. >> i was standing about right here. steve, the cameraman, was right

behind me, and the county supervisor, lucille moore, was standing about right here. i was interviewing lucille, standing here, and all of a sudden, you know, we hear this big -- >> something started falling out of the sky. people just started going, oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh. and i just clicked the camera on right away and i just moved out to the left side and i'm looking up and there's like something that looks like a comet coming down from the sky. >> the photographer with the county, hans went, he's standing on this side, so the collision happens, hans looked up this way and hans got off two shots of the psa air 182 before it crashed. >> when i looked up, all i saw was the airliner with the engine on fire and it was starting to bank to the right, and a big chunk of the leading edge of the wing was torn off. so i knew that the plane, you know, had to crash. it couldn't possibly survive. and everything happened very fast. i just got off one shot, sort of by instinct, and the second picture was almost a silhouette.

>> cameraman steve howell and i rushed to the scene two blocks away. there were several homes involved in a raging fire. there was thick, black smoke shooting 300 to 400 feet into the air. >> this is a wall of flames. i'm going, it must have been a gas main or something, you know. i mean, how could this be? >> this was the largest thing that had ever happened to me and my news career to that point. and i knew it was big. i knew it was bad. but we didn't know it was a plane crash. >> when we come back, how an assumption leads to tragedy. >> they're required to tell air traffic control that they no longer have the cessna in sight. that didn't happen. what you don't know can hurt you. what if you didn't know that home insurance can keep your stuff covered,even when it's not at home? or that collisions with wildlife on the road may not be covered.

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1978. an nbc news crew captures a small plane spiraling to the ground after it has collided half a mile up with a much larger 727. >> behind us we heard a tremendous explosion. we know at that point it was a lot more than just a single plane. and of course, we found out later it was an airliner. >> both pilots in the cessna are killed along with all 135 aboard the jet and seven people in the residential neighborhood below. police set up a makeshift morgue at a nearby high school and immediately the questions begin. who's at fault? what caused this tragic accident? how could it have been avoided? to understand what happened, it's critical to know what transpired between air traffic control and the psa crew in the two minutes leading up to the collision. >> as the boeing 727 was approaching san diego, they were told about a small, general aviation airplane.

>> it's a cessna, do you see him? and the psa flight crew said, yes, we see them. at that point, the psa crew became responsible for maintaining separation. >> the crew initially saw the airplane, but then at some point lost sight of it. they talked about it amongst the three pilots that were in the airplane, ed, do you know where that cessna 172 is? i think it passed off the right side. >> 182? >> they're required to tell air traffic control that they no longer have the cessna in sight. that didn't happen. >> the cessna-172 actually deviated without clearance from its assigned heading. unfortunately it was in a position that was directly in front but below the 727. the crew couldn't see just looking out the window where the airplane was because it was

below their field of view. >> cleared to land? >> tower, we're going down, this is psa. >> okay, we'll call the equipment for you. >> the 172 struck the leading edge of the right wing about halfway across the span, and that is the famous picture, you see smoke and fire trailing from the right wing of the boeing 727. >> as a result it pulled the nose further and further down and they couldn't stop it and they lost control. they did not have control of the jet and it tragically went into the ground. >> in its final report the ntsb faults the psa crew for failing to maintain visual separation from the cessna and for failing to inform the controller when they no longer had the other aircraft in sight. contributing to the accident, says the report, air traffic

control procedures, authorizing the controller to use visual separation when radar was available. flight crews exercise a lower vigilance when they have radar -- where they receive assistance. this controller may have believed that the flight crew had a better grasp on the situation than he did. >> it will be days before the clean-up is complete. and in the words of one policeman, it will be years before this neighborhood is ever the same. >> after the psa crash, the faa steps up efforts to improve separation of aircraft around the nation's busiest airports and to modernize collision avoidance technology. but again, change simply doesn't happen fast enough. eight years later, 1986, another sunny day over southern california, another jet, another small aircraft and another catastrophic mid-air collision.

>> it was a sunday, it was in august and my brother and i were playing on the driveway. my father was sitting on the lawn. and we were on our bikes and i remember my brother just very casually said, look, there's a plane on fire and it's coming down on our house. >> 6,500 feet above cerritos, california, a suburb east of los angeles, a privately owned piper archer has strayed into the path of aeromexico flight 498, a dc-9 with 64 people on board. at the time corrine kingsbury is 5 years old. >> my father came and swooped us and brought us into the garage and our garage door is obviously open and he said to us, "we're going to die."

i remember it shook the ground and it just exploded. >> eight homes destroyed, five more severely damaged, 24 dead on the ground and that number may go higher. >> i also remember seeing body parts and seats and people still in seats. it just smelled like death, like smoke and death. >> corrine's house is spared but many other homes in the neighborhood are not. when we come back, after the second mid-air collision in eight years, a public outcry for change amid heart breaking loss. >> i mean, who thinks your family is going to die in a plane crash. really? car accidents, not a plane crash. they lived. ♪ they lived. ♪

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good morning. the news from cerritos, california, keeps getting worse.

there are officials searching through the ruins of sunday's mid-air crash and found 15 more people dead on the ground. >> labor day weekend 1986 more than a mile above cerritos, a suburb of los angeles, a piper archer smashes into aeromexico flight 498, a dc-9. the top of the piper is sheered off, instantly killing all three passengers aboard, a middle-aged couple and their adult daughter. in the crash over san diego a -- eight years earlier, the larger plane, psa flight 182, loses sight of a much smaller cessna, and slams into it from behind. over cerritos, the piper pilot doesn't realize he has strayed into controlled airspace surrounding lax, los angeles international airport. >> when you're flying in unknown -- uncontrolled airspace, you don't necessarily have to talk to an air traffic controller. you don't necessarily have to have a transponder, but if

you're going to operate anywhere within a controlled airspace, you have to have permission to operate in that airspace. you can't just fly into it without permission. >> the dc-9 crew believed correctly that they were in protected areas and they were. but unbeknownst to them, the piper had strayed in their airspace. >> the general aviation airplane struck the tail of the dc-9, taking off the vertical and horizontal stabilizer and rendered the dc-9 inverted. the back end of the airplane, and there's a picture of it as it descended upside down before it crashes into a neighborhood. >> counting passengers and those on the ground, the total number of people killed now stands at 85, and that could go even higher as the search continues for victims on tuesday, september 2, 1986. >> in some way the mid-air collisions in san diego and

cerritos are so similar, there's a public outcry about how little has been done in the intervening years. >> after the first one, the recommendations they made were never implemented. so now this is the second time this has happened so that's why we tried to make a difference. but it's hard to fight government agencies, you know. >> denise guzman's family is particularly hard hit by the cerritos tragedy. her father-in-law, uncle, two nephews and a family friend are on flight 498, returning from a fishing trip in mexico. her husband is supposed to be with them but misses the trip to attend a funeral. when the plane crashes, part of the family is already waiting at the airport to pick them up. instead they head to the crash site. >> i mean, it was an inferno and you knew nobody -- there was

nobody going to survive that. i think my husband might have had a little hope, you know, are there any survivors? no. but i knew immediately that this was not going to have a good ending. >> in the neighborhood struck by disaster, the search for the missing goes on. >> i mean, who thinks your family is going to die in a plane crash. really? car accidents, not a plane crash. it's just like unheard of. how could that happen? and in our own neighborhood. that's what's ironic, our own neighborhood. >> probable cause as stated in the final ntsb report, limitations of the air traffic control system to provide collision protection and the inadvertent and unauthorized entry of the private plane into los angeles terminal control area. with the knowledge gained from each mid-air collision, change has been on the horizon for decades but the aeromexico crash over cerritos brings it all home.

by 1989 all aircraft operating up to 10,000 feet within 30 miles of terminal control areas must be equipped with transponders that convey altitude information. by 1993 all commercial carrier aircraft with ten seats or more operating within u.s. airspace are equipped with traffic alert and collision avoidance systems, tcas. >> the culmination beginning back with piedmont flight 22 going through the psa accident and then finally through the cerritos accident were all building blocks to promote this technology, which evolved into the modern system of tcas, which is a great predictive tool. >> the faa really had to take the bull by the horn, if you will, and do something to try and prevent these accidents from occurring. we increased or enhanced radar coverage.

we enhanced air traffic control communication with flight crews. they changed the airspace. they actually created a system of controlled airspace, trying to avoid or at least mitigate the risk that you were going to have these transient pilots just flying through these high density areas in close proximity to major airports. >> all the lessons learned have made flying so safe and mid-air collisions so rare, according to an mit study you'd have to fly continuously for 11,000 years in order to experience one. unfortunately, many people had to lose their lives to arrive at what is surely the safest moment yet in aviation history.

fire breaks out in the cabin of a dc-9 just minutes after takeoff. the pilots lose control and the plane plunges nose-first into the everglades. >> when that nose dropped, i realized it was going to crash. >> an md-11 crashes after smoke mysteriously fills the cockpit. >> the airplane was burning up around them. >> about two hours into a flight, a dc-9 fills with smoke and loses all of its electrical systems. >> we're going down. >> we thought everybody could get out because there wasn't any screams. >> moments after takeoff, flames erupt from the world's most on