this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Based on the videos of near misses on YouTube, the safety margins are so enormous that even an event classified as near miss is not really recognizable by a layperson, because the two airplanes are nowhere near each other.
Guessing "near collision" means one plane had to divert a few degrees before continuing course? Yeah totally normal, you don't want them to be anywhere close to what you and I consider as "near".
They usually go up or down as opposed to left or right, but near miss is usually just anything that activates TCAS in either aircraft.
AFAIK "near" means "in a minute's time, you might be within a thousand feet of another aircraft".
Which means 99.99% of the time they didn't "need" to divert course, but they did out of an abundance of caution.
Near miss can be a confusing phrase, but it means a miss where the objects (or planes here) were very near each other. With that context, a near collision wouldn't make sense as there's no way to have a collision where the objects are just near each other (as opposed to contacting each other).
Yes, but the layperson's perspective doesn't really matter here and it's worth reading the NYT piece. The underlying issue is that air traffic controllers are overworked and making mistakes due to staffing shortages and mandatory overtime while working a mentally taxing job. There are legitimate concerns that if this isn't addressed, we could see actual collisions and casualties.
It seems silly to minimize this.
Even if the distances seem great to you, if the FAA says "that's a near miss" and "we're operating outside of safety requirements", that means that if you roll the dice long enough you WILL have a crash.
Yes, but the "everybody panic!" vibe the article is trying to convey is way too dramatic.
When air traffic controllers tell you "this is a crisis" I think we should listen. Must we wait for an actual crash before we do something? It seems like we never react UNTIL a crisis explodes.
Another example: last year, while threatening a railroad strike, the railroad unions warned that derailments and near catastrophes were going up. Just a few months after they were forced back to work without additional support or breaks, the East Palestine disaster struck. The people responsible for inspecting cars TOLD the media and TOLD congress that this was happening. And it's still going on. Derailments are like mass shootings. They happen about weekly, but the reporting just covers a few of the big ones.
Of course the air traffic controllers should be listened to, since they can predict the future tendencies.
I think railroads have less safety margin in their system, mostly due to having one dimension fewer available. A plane can (and automatically does) stop a collision by ascending or descending. A train can't do that.
Absolutely. But when the two objects are flying at 600 mph.....
The NYT article points to at least one case where the planes almost scraped skin to skin.
good think we have you, a laymen who fixed the problem by watching youtube videos! 😂
I'm not fixing anything, I'm just saying that "everybody panic!" is premature.
And basis for this deep insight of yours is you have seen some YouTube videos.. Got it. That definitely wins over some pilots describing their experience in that NYT article.
And airplanes have systems to make sure planes don't collide midair. I'm not sure if small private planes do however.