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'Near Collisions' of Commercial Jets Happen All the Time: FAA Records (gizmodo.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 83 points 3 years ago (15 children)

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.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    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".

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago*

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago

    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).

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  • [–] 14 points 3 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    Yes, but the "everybody panic!" vibe the article is trying to convey is way too dramatic.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    good think we have you, a laymen who fixed the problem by watching youtube videos! 😂

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