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.
Large 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.
Even 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.
> 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.
> 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.
> 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.)
> The pilots of both aircraft are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic.
How's that supposed to work with Instrument Flight Rules, for which you literally train by wearing glasses which block your view outside the window [0]? And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)? It'll go from impossible-to-see to collision in a few seconds - which is why you won't see any "they didn't look outside the window enough" in the report of accidents like Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907.
The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic.
> How's that supposed to work with Instrument Flight Rules, for which you literally train by wearing glasses which block your view outside the window [0]?
If you're wearing "foggles" (the technical term is a "view limiting device"), you're legally required to have a safety pilot who is responsible for maintaining visual watch.
You never, ever wear those while flying solo.
> And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)?
First, this near-miss was with a refueling tanker, which only travels at normal large-jet speed and is quite large.
If it was a fighter jet, you're right, it would be very hard to see. But frankly, compared to a fighter jet, everyone else might as well be a stationary object in the sky in terms of speed and maneuverability - so you're just relying on the fighter jet not to hit you. (They also have onboard primary radar and other fancy toys - so you hope they have more situational awareness of non-participating aircraft.)
> The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic.
Most airspace below 18,000 feet is still "controlled airspace", even though you have to look out for traffic - including commercial traffic. The big jets don't like to stay down there any longer than they have to, but that doesn't mean they're not there.
Being on an IFR clearance only guarantees that you're deconflicted with other IFR traffic. There's always the risk that there's non-participating traffic, especially in visual conditions (VMC). Class A airspace and transponder-required airspace help reduce this risk, but it's never completely eliminated.
Also, more importantly: The military largely plays by their own rules, entirely outside of the FAA.
I'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.
Not 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/
I 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.
ADSB 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.
> 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.
So in your opinion, that was went wrong here, the military/pilot of the refueling plane didn't actually keep visual watch for traffic nor radar?
I wasn't there and don't know all the facts, so I'm not going to attempt to assign blame in this specific instance.
But speaking generally, I'll just say: If you're flying in VMC conditions (good weather), you're always required to see-and-avoid. Even if you're on an IFR clearance. Everything else is just considered an aid for situational awareness.
> I wasn't there and don't know all the facts, so I'm not going to attempt to assign blame in this specific instance.
Didn't you already though? You said "pilots [..] are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic", and considering one of the parties has a filed flight plan and had their transponder turned on, I can't really read it any way except "the pilots of the military aircraft didn't do what they were supposed to" which is implicitly blaming them, or am I missing some angle/interpretation of what you said?
I don't believe that would be incorrect, because of the context, but I'm curious why'd you suddenly hesitate to say it seems to be the fault of the military here, yet previous comment made that hint implicitly.
No, I stated the regulations, in reply to the parent comment about transponder rules.
I don't know what the weather conditions were, I don't know what the sight-picture was from each aircraft, I don't know if any equipment was malfunctioning, and we don't have a statement from the military pilot.
Many pilots are very hesitant to (publicly) assign blame in an incident without all the facts, since the details do matter. It's too easy to jump to conclusions otherwise.
If the positioning [here](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…?
> 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.
> 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.
The 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.
> 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.
I 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.
> 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.
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)