Pilot's final words to his mum before plane crashed killing 144 people

A pilot’s final words to his mother have been revealed following the most tragic aviation accident ever in California.

On 25 September 1978, San Diego Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight (PSA) 182 accidentally collided with a small Cessna 172 in mid-air.

The Boeing 727 was approaching San Diego, US, when its pilots lost sight of the Cessna and mistakenly believed they had already travelled passed it.

Moments later, the two aircraft collided, sending Flight 182 plunging towards the North Park residential neighbourhood of San Diego, destroying and damaging numerous homes.

135 people aboard Flight 182, two people aboard the Cessna and seven people on the ground all died, marking 144 fatalities in total with 22 homes damaged or destroyed.

After realising the aircraft was going down, Captain James McFeron warned passengers to ‘brace yourself’.

On 25 September 1978, San Diego Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight (PSA) 182 accidentally collided with a small Cessna 172 in mid-air (San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive)

Chilling cockpit recordings captured the crew's final moments, as First Officer Robert Fox, 38, could be heard discussing with Captain James McFeron, 42, about Cessna's location.

"Yeah... I don't see him now," Fox says, then adds: "Are we clear of that Cessna?"

Flight Engineer Martin Wahne replies: "Supposed to be."

Captain McFeron then laughs: "I saw him at one o'clock, he's probably behind us now."

The plane, however, was just below it.

The Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) Flight 182 disaster remains the deadliest aviation accident in California history (San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive)

McFeron says: "What have we got here?", to which Fox responds: "We're hit man, we are hit."

"Tower, we're going down, this is PSA," McFeron says, uttering: "This is it baby!".

An unidentified voice in the cockpit is heard saying to his mother: "Ma, I love you."

“The aircraft collided at an altitude of approximately 2,600 ft,” the FFA said.

“The NTSB determined that the probable cause of the accident was the failure of the flight crew of Flight 182 to comply with the provisions of a maintain-visual-separation clearance, including the requirement to inform the controller when they no longer had the other aircraft in sight.

144 lost their lives (San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive)

“Contributing to the accident were the air traffic control procedures in effect which authorized the controllers to use visual separation procedures to separate two aircraft on potentially conflicting tracks when the capability was available to provide either lateral or vertical radar separation to either aircraft.”

The City of San Diego says the disaster ‘caused the revision of air traffic rules applicable to the busiest airports across the US’.

On the 45th anniversary in 2023, San Diego Air & Space Museum president and CEO Jim Kidrick said: “It is important to never forget the men and women who lost their lives that day.”

It remains California's deadliest aviation disaster.