Collision over San Luis Obispo

The sky was clear, as a Wings West commuter plane carrying 15 people took off from the San Luis Obispo airport for San Francisco, some 200 miles to the north. Meanwhile, a flight instructor and his student were flying near by in a single-engine plane. The aircrafts met without warning at 3,000 ft. The flaming wreckage plummeted to the ground, killing all 17 aboard.

The San Luis Obispo airport is considered too small to have a control tower, so no one was in charge of guiding the traffic. Aircraft taking off and landing are supposed to use the same radio frequency so that they will be aware of other planes in the area. In 1979 five people were killed when a plane crashed on a ridge near by, and a year later there were two near-misses in the air. Still, the Federal Aviation Administration has turned down San Luis Obispo's requests for a tower. "Since the air controllers' strike, the FAA'S position has been to decommission towers rather than commission them," says George Rosenberger, the airport's acting manager. "We feel we qualify for a tower, but it's a very expensive process."