1986 Cerritos Mid-air Collision - Collision and Crash

Collision and Crash

The Piper aircraft, N4891F, with the pilot and two passengers aboard, had departed Torrance, California at about 11:40 PDT. At about 11:46 Flight 498 began its descent into Los Angeles with 58 passengers and six crew members aboard. At 11:52, 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 the pilot and both passengers. The heavily damaged Piper fell onto an empty playground at Cerritos Elementary School.

The DC-9, with most of its vertical and all of its horizontal stabilizer torn off, inverted and fell to the earth in a residential neighborhood at Holmes Avenue and Reva Circle in Cerritos, killing all 64 passengers and crew aboard the jetliner and 15 people on the ground. The impact and fire destroyed five houses and damaged seven more. A fire sparked by the crash contributed significantly to the damage. When the air traffic controller assigned to Flight 498 could not find the aircraft on the radar, he called up an inbound American Airlines MD-83 for assistance. The pilot on American Airlines Flight 333 replied that he saw a large smoke plume off to his left, indicating that Flight 498 had crashed.