1980 Otay air accident
Transamerica Airlines Lockheed 382 · Collision with a parachutist
From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP) to San Diego, CA
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 4
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Lockheed 382
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed 382
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N18ST
- Operator
- Transamerica Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport (ECP)To San Diego, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 135: Air taxi & commuter (domestic military cargo contract)
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · descent
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Miscellaneous
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Personnel › Other
- Personnel › Pilot of other aircraft
Not plotted · The 1962-1981 archive names a place, not coordinates, and the place could not be matched to a single town.
From the Wikipedia article
The 1980 Otay air accident occurred on 23 August 1980, when a Lockheed L-100-30 Hercules cargo aircraft of the airline Transamerica Airlines collided in mid-air with a parachutist near the Californian locality of Otay. No one on board the aircraft was harmed, but the parachutist was killed by the collision.
Accident sequence
On that day a single-engine Cessna 180 had taken off from the Borderland Air Sports Center with a pilot and three parachutists. The parachutists jumped from an altitude of 7,500 feet. After the jump, at an altitude of 5,000 feet, the 24-year-old parachutist John P. Nichols collided with the Hercules, which was on approach to San Diego. The jumper was struck by the aircraft's tail unit and fell to the ground. The aircraft was only slightly damaged in the collision; the jumper died.
Investigation and cause
Cause
The Federal Aviation Administration investigated the incident. One investigator described the incident as extremely unusual and stated that he had never heard of a comparable incident. In his view, the accident was so unusual that it would be practically impossible to deliberately repeat such an event if one were to try.
It was determined that the pilot of the Cessna had not informed air traffic control of parachute jumping activity, although he had been in radio contact with air traffic control in San Diego. The jumper's parachute had not been deployed at the time of the collision; the investigators were of the opinion that the crew of the Lockheed could have seen the jumper and possibly avoided him in time had the parachute been open.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the German Wikipedia article “Flugunfall bei Otay 1980” (revision 251248939, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
NTSB remarks
COLLIDED WITH FREE-FALLING PARACHUTIST-PLT OF JUMP ACFT DID NOT NOTIFY ATC OF JUMP ACTIVITY.
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
German Wikipedia article: Flugunfall bei Otay 1980
- Article
- Flugunfall bei Otay 1980
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 251248939 · 2024-12-14 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q103821285
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19800823P079200
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- de Wikipedia article "Flugunfall bei Otay 1980" (page 11499803, revision 251248939), translated into English with AI assistance; merged with NTSB case NTSB19800823P079200 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200
- Map position
- NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200: operated under Part 135: Air taxi & commuter (mil contract-cargo-domestic)
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19800823P079200: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia article lead
Source notes (5)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "1980 Otay air accident" and NTSB case NTSB19800823P079200, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- The NTSB record (NTSB19800823P079200) gives 1 fatalities and the Wikipedia article 0; the NTSB's figure is shown, as this is a US event.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Reviewed means this record passed the site's consistency check, not that it was checked against a narrative or report - there is none to check against.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.