Technology

Let me add some context from the perspective of an airline pilot who is also is a company training captain.

All modern transport category aircraft are equipped with a system called TCAS, or Terminal Collision Avoidance System.

TCAS operates by interrogating the TCAS system of other aircraft in a defined proximity ring based on some variables like altitude and rate of closure and resolves a climb/descend/level command to each aircraft, which we pilots train regularly to execute. The system is a near perfect solution to deconfliction when collision is probable.

With daily average flights in the US alone around 45 000, the amount of “near misses” is an incredibly small percentage. In 15 years of flying TCAS equipped aircraft, I’ve had 5 actual TCAS RAs (RA stands for resolution advisory - the actual avoidance maneuver)

Another way to look at it is: when was the last mid-air collision in the US, or even the world involving TCAS equipped airliners? The only one that comes to mind is the DHL-BAL mid air in 2002, which was a result of the one crew not following the TCAS instruction.

This article can fuck right off.

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.

Can someone be sacked for these stupid fear mongering presentations of what should be fairly banal topics? If there was actual reason to worry, we would point out the constant remarkable disasters which should discourage you.

Looks like the TCAS system has been doing a fine job, which it was designed to do.

For those who don't know, there is a system onboard every modern airliner that has one job: detect planes at (roughly) same altitude, heading towards each other. It then very clearly tells one plane to pull up while telling the other to dive.

Pilots are instructed to follow TCAS above anything else they might hear from controller or captain.

TCAS is why we have nearly no mid air collisions, especially considering the amount of planes sharing the same crowded space near airports.

We need Mentour Pilot or 74 Gear to make a video tearing apart all the fear mongering in this article (not saying it's totally invalid, but it's massively overblown). But basically, a "near miss" in commercial aviation is "this plane momentarily transgressed the very generous mandated safety distances and triggered a resolution advisory in the cockpit of both aircraft which was complied with immediately." It is by no means equivalent to a "near colission" like they imply. The worst part of the ordeal was probably the reports the pilots and ATC had to file afterward.

I'm annoyed that this article doesn't call out the people responsible for this whole ordeal. First: the FAA has been without a confirmed administrator for over a year.

"The FAA, which manages air traffic throughout the nation, has been without a Senate-confirmed leader since March of last year, when Stephen Dickson resigned halfway through his five-year term. Since then, the agency has faced understaffing of air traffic controllers, a technical outage that grounded flights nationwide in January, and several close calls between airline jets."

https://apnews.com/article/faa-acting-administrator-biden-buttigieg-079bbc6c1abb13b404946c75a06ec311

Biden has not made nominating a qualified candidate a priority. The Senate needs to stop dicking around and approve or deny faster, because they're the reason this stretches on. And Secretary of Transpiration Pete Buttigieg seems to only appear in the news when he's apologizing after people ask where he is when a critical piece of transportation infrastructure suffers a catastrophic failure. Maybe he's doing great things, but I'm not hearing about them, I'm just seeing signs of things not going well, and I'd like some reassurance.

I honestly thought that Transportation was going to be the thing that Biden and Buttigieg would be best qualified for, and I've been pretty baffled by the lack of management going on.

for the smartasses who once heard about tcas, so everything is, obviously, made up bullshit.

from the nyt article that gizmodo refers to:

“I saw the nose of the jet with his lights illuminated at a close range. It looked like a cover photo from Flying Magazine,” a commercial airline pilot wrote in March, after coming within 200 feet of crashing into another aircraft in the skies around Jacksonville, Fla. “This conflict was too close to risk any single life we had on board, much less the 198 souls traveling collectively on us.”

In another report this year, a pilot narrated nearly colliding with two separate passenger planes after landing in Tampa on a foggy morning.

“I noticed a dark silhouette of an aircraft that appeared to be moving directly at us. It was extremely difficult to see, but I yelled ‘STOP’ to the captain, ‘The aircraft is going to hit us,’” the pilot wrote. “The other aircraft never slowed down, and if we would have noticed it a second later we would have collided. There was a second aircraft following the first, and it did not slow down either, and it passed our wingtips within ft.”

Just after 5 p.m. on Aug. 7, a controller at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport cleared American Flight 1388 for takeoff to New York. The controller instructed it to turn right after departing the airport, but the American pilot incorrectly repeated the directions back to the controller, according to F.A.A. safety reports. The controller didn’t catch the mistake.

After the plane took off, it banked left instead of right, directly into the path of a Southwest flight en route to Austin.

A different air traffic controller realized the planes were on a collision course. He radioed in urgent tones to the American pilot that the other flight was just to its left — “a Boeing 737 sitting right there.”

The two planes came within a third of a mile horizontally and 300 feet vertically of each other before pulling apart.

A midair catastrophe had been averted by seconds.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/21/business/airline-safety-close-calls.html?unlocked_article_code=tWiqDFEyubuq-7-szj9zQJcp3aGo5UNrveBo6AA37UGq4_jvhtxJHjWDuUKiPEBOZVpr15IpzqhZUCGVZaiUvR28TM8X31bhoIoLvEpUjpCE0RtKxNydxkEvpFyicdi-9_9OGu_4_4eVh3CblE_Ld27CX0SgfWIC3hPTujXd-dWVzEp24JxIeis8Q7XLjVycHU-uMKX6Kw-8ygOFcZCm1kOdodPoEUlWckt-POQ62yOZWhbVPXNzwwsA3bDUq1z3-ds1CiahRdu0GoaropAo0hrSgZmMrOU9YQqoWO0GSwuaCqZJXIAyFmgkGOZdyRBguewITTiHlLo9d-lERJ12iSH4Mrp4uUA7ec8lp2wNFRZavMCEj2Q&smid=url-share

I experienced what they’re talking about. Plane was coming in to land. Suddenly the engines revved to the max and we tilted up. We flew right past the airport. The captain came in the com and said “Ladies and gentlemen you may have noticed we did not land. A Delta flight was on the runway where it should not have been. At delta they’re still learning to fly, and it shows!”

You could tell from his voice that he was pissed. To be fair I doubt he knew for sure it was pilot error instead of controller error. But anyway.

At least it's nice to see them sticking with George Carlin's nomenclature.

Here's a phrase that apparently the airlines simply made up: near miss. They say that if 2 planes almost collide, it's a near miss. Bullshit, my friend. It's a near hit! A collision is a near miss. [WHAM! CRUNCH!] "Look, they nearly missed!" "Yes, but not quite."

These people don't know how TCAS works lol

No mention of the TCAS? Education time.

The ICAO requires all passenger aircraft to be equipped with TCAS - Traffic Collision Avoidance System. It is a last line of defense to avoid collision. When two TCAS-equipped airplanes are on a collision course, the TCAS modules will contact each other and negotiate, then issue corrective actions to their respective pilots - one to ascend, and the other to descend. Responding to a TCAS command is mandatory and overrules ATC instructions.

I didn’t want to know that.

Decision Height: Climb Climb Climb

Other plane: Descend Descend Descend

And just to think, some people actually think flying cars are a good idea... 🤦‍♂️