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Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Even at full cruising speed of 500-600MPH (less because the JetBlue was still on a climb) t
by DLA 9mo ago
Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Even at full cruising speed of 500-600MPH (less because the JetBlue was still on a climb) the civilian aircraft would cover a mile in 6-7 seconds, so we are talking 18 to 24 seconds to close 3-4 miles.
Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on, especially in the vicinity of threats. Without a transponder the civilian aircraft TCAS/ACAS would not warn about traffic.
Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred, but there are some very real SAM threats the Air Force aircraft would need to worry about.
(edited typos)
- snypher 9mo agoWell common enroute separation is 5NM so in aviation, it's close. Is there a NOTAM for military traffic on this area?
- DLA 9mo agoThe FAA did warn about military ops in the area. Good question; not sure they issued a NOTAM.
- embedding-shape 9mo ago> Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred 64km off the coast of Venezuela. > Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions? One would think if there is threats somewhere, they'd first mark the region as restricted, so no public airplanes go there in the first place, then they can fly without the transponders.
- DLA 9mo agoThreats are not to civilian aircraft. If conflict occurs areas would become restricted.
- deathanatos 9mo agoIf the positioning [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs) is at all close to accurate, that looks closer to 300km, with the entirety of Aruba between them & the closest point in Venezuela. (Or all of Curaçao, but I think that line is longer.) (TFA does say 64 km, though.) Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…?
- embedding-shape 9mo ago> Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…? If you take off from Curaçao and head like 10km west before you've actually left the island, you end up pretty much within 64km of Adicora, Venezuela. Probably what they meant I guess.
- tjohns 9mo ago> Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions? As a pilot, I can tell you it happens all the time. Even in US domestic airspace. Transponder use is optional for the military, and they will turn them off for some training missions. (Or in this case, a real mission.) No, they don't close the airspace when this is being done. The pilots of both aircraft (civilian and military) are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. The military aircraft should also be keeping an eye on primary radar. (Transponder use is also optional for some civilian aircraft, btw.)
- 0_____0 9mo agoI've been buzzed by a flight of military helicopters in the New Mexico desert. Not intentionally, they just happened to overfly my tent, and I just happened to have cell service somehow. I checked ADSB and sure enough they were flying dark.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoNot necessarily; the same remoteness that made cell signal sparse likely makes ADS-B ground stations unlikely. There has to be one in range for it to show up places like FlightAware. Plenty of dead spots; you can help expand the network! https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build/ https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build/
- FireBeyond 9mo agoI have an ADS-B receiver on a computer here, and am overhead a number of flight paths for JBLM. The above comment is accurate, plenty of local training helicopter flights will be fully or partly dark (lights and/or transponders off), looking at my receiver's raw output stream.
- miahi 9mo agoADSB is not mandatory in the US below FL100 or FL180 (10000/18000 feet), that covers most helicopter flights. It depends also on the website you are using to track. I have an ADSB receiver that publishes to multiple tracking websites (the same data, unfiltered), and not all of them publish all the data. Flightradar24 doesn't show most of the military aircraft - I can see them on my local tracking interface but they are not shown on their website.
- dragonwriter 9mo ago> Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Generally, from what I can find, the FAA definition is <500ft, so no, a few miles is potentially an issue, but not what would generally be categorized as a near miss unless there is some situational wrinkle that applies here.
- kijin 9mo agoThe Air Force is probably used to flying much closer to one another, but civilians are not. Even in a busy airspace, jet airliners are usually kept apart >1000ft vertically, and much more horizontally in the direction they're moving. These birds can fly 500ft in less than 1 second after all.
- dragonwriter 9mo ago> The Air Force is probably used to flying much closer to one another, but civilians are not. The FAA isn’t primarily concerned with the Air Force. They investigate and address loss of separation incidents that fall short of rheir definition of near misses, they just don’t describe them as near misses.
- kijin 9mo agoI wasn't talking about the FAA definition specifically, only that military pilots probably have a narrower definition of a near miss than civilians do. They also seem to be overconfident in their ability to identify, track and evade other aircraft. Example: the Helicopter pilot who crashed into a civilian jet over the Potomac earlier this year.
- Retric 9mo agoLarge aircraft take a while to avoid collisions due to their size and both jets are in motion. So this could have been within 5-10 seconds of a collision depending on specifics. The critical issue is the civilian aircraft “took evasive action on Friday to avoid a mid-air collision with a U.S. Air Force tanker plane near Venezuela, a pilot said in an air traffic control recording.” Which needs to be reported as it then can impact other air traffic to avoid further issues.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 9mo agoIf both craft took the same evasive action? Still could be a collison. A few seconds is so little to play with.
- ralferoo 9mo agoEven if the military plane had its transponder off, the civilian plane didn't. The military pilot had no justification for not knowing the civilian plane was there and at a minimum adjusting its altitude to make this a non issue.
- ceejayoz 9mo agoAnd the tanker was likely supervised from an AWACS aircraft that probably should’ve flagged this, too.
- EdwardDiego 9mo ago> Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Even at full cruising speed of 500-600MPH (less because the JetBlue was still on a climb) the civilian aircraft would cover a mile in 6-7 seconds, so we are talking 18 to 24 seconds to close 3-4 miles. Sweet, so they've got less than half a minute to avoid a collision.
- yunohn 9mo ago> there are some very real SAM threats the Air Force aircraft would need to worry about The US Air Force should /absolutely/ be worried about Venezuela fighting back, with SAMs or otherwise. This military action and potential war is a travesty and the whole world should condemn and ostracize the USA immediately.
- bgnn 9mo agoWhat if it was dark, or cloudy? Or the pilots weren't looking outside?