Anyone who was living in San Diego in 1978 remembers where they were when they saw or heard about it.
And what they saw that day was similar to what people around Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. saw Wednesday night.
It was September 25th, 1978. The mid-air collision of a PSA passenger jet, on a flight from Sacramento, which was about to land at the airport downtown when it was struck by a small private plane over the skies of North Park. Both aircraft crashing to the ground in the neighborhood below.
Everyone on board both aircraft died, and some on the ground, 144 in all.
As fate would have it, the passenger jet that was struck by an Army helicopter Wednesday over the Potomac River also had PSA markings on it. Not the same PSA, or Pacific Southwest Airlines, which was based in San Diego back in 1978, but a coincidence, with the ill-fated PSA Airlines jet part of a regional American Airlines group.
The crash over San Diego 47 years ago led to changes in air traffic control and air space regulations that has made flying safer over the decades.
The deadly mid-air collision Wednesday night in D.C. will probably lead to changes in air space regulations as well.
There has not been as deadly crash as this one for nearly a quarter century. And despite this tragedy, flying remains the safest form of travel. But there will be lessons learned from this that will make flying even safer.