The deadliest aircraft collision that never happened:

a reply to: Zaphod58
The TCAS is only a tool that still needs the Mk1 eyeball to avoid traffic.

a reply to: buddah6

Oh of course, but it's a great tool to give the Mk1 an idea of where to point. At even two miles a 757 head on is a damn small target.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Agree! When I was flying for a living, over Chicago, when we first got TCAS we routinely had to turn it off because of all of it's warnings. The TCAS has been greatly improved since then.

a reply to: buddah6

A horrible collision happened over Europe that resulted in the deaths of a group of school children from Russia, that weren't even supposed to be there at that time.

There was a snafu with the flight they were scheduled for so they chartered a plane a few days later. There was construction going on at the ATC centers in Sweden I believe it was, so they were passed to another controller, because three radios were being worked on. His partner went on break leaving him watching two screens across the room from each other.

TCAS went off in both planes, telling the Russian plane to dive, the controller told them to climb, they listened to him, and collided with a DHL flight.

After that crash ICAO and FAA passed rules that TCAS is the final ultimate authority. Regardless of the controller instructions, you listen to it. Prior to that they were still in the "fact finding" stage with regards to that situation.

What a self aggrandizing j@ck@$$...

Tenerife airport disaster

Japan Airlines Flight 123

Sometimes I hate the internets...

a reply to: Mirthful Me

Yeah I noticed he was wrong on several things WRT that accident. That just seriously decreases his credibility WRT this incident.

a reply to: Zaphod58
I remember that! I have many friends that work for DHL and that event shook them up badly.

Two Weeks Ago, I Almost Died in the Deadliest Plane Crash Ever

Kevin, you didn't, so the system worked. Be thankful for the changes and technological improvements due to those before you who didn't make it.

Imagine being in a tanker trying to air refuel with TCAS.

TCAS: "Pull up, pull up"
Boom: "Booms, co, shut that thing off!"
Co: "uh boom, how do I shut it off?"
Boom:"never mind co, were in contact, dumbass."

a reply to: Mirthful Me

I remember talking to one of Boeing's engineers in 1989 and he mentioned the Japanese crash. He told me that the repair drawings for the JAL 747 were sent by a fax machine and in the process a row of rivets were deleted and some lines were added that made it look like the repair was comprised of three parts, when it was supposed to be only one.

Boeing had a Materials Engineer that figured out the number of cycles that the incorrectly repaired bulkhead could have handled. His name was and I'm not kidding, Tom Swift.

a reply to: Mirthful Me

Oh heck... I was just getting back over to this to work the story and see what I could find either true or false about it.

Now what you add leaves me wondering if it's worth putting the time into at all? The body count to claiming the largest is so badly blown right out the gate, it tells me the fact checking the article implies may have happened, never did. Not when something that basic is missed... Wow...

This is depressing when even a human interest story like this is so badly twisted for honesty, there is little or nothing resembling truth to the most basic points. (sigh)

Here's another point to consider. He says he interviewed the crew immediately after landing in Los Angeles. That could result in at minimum suspensions for that crew, both from United, and from their pilots license.

First no crew is supposed to talk to anyone after an incident like this until interviews are completed by the FAA/NTSB, or are notified there will be no investigation.

Second, no airline will tolerate a crew speaking to the media without either an airline rep there, or speaking to the crew first and clearing their comments before the interview.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That's interesting to know for future reference. I didn't realize it had become that absolute, although it makes sense. Liability issues were similar where I was at for trucking in orders of who we could and absolutely could NEVER talk to during or after an incident of any kind.

Little details like that about the airlines helps spot something like this on the face of it, in the future.

@ Thread

Sorry guys! Looks like I brought a lemon and there isn't even enough of it to make lemonade with.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

This is the tightest I've ever seen the industry financially. I've seen an airline run two quarters losing $200M, then come in at the end of the year up $50-70M for the year. As tight as things are with billion dollar orders for new planes casually being dropped, no one is going to take a chance with a lawsuit over something like this.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Don't sweat it. Many of us learned something today reading this thread and that make it worthwhile.

Uh Oh.... We might all have been a bit hasty for lack of more information and reference....

Associated Press just carried this across their wire a short time ago.

They say a United Airlines pilot quickly descended after getting a cockpit alert about an oncoming US Airways flight on April 25.

A government official familiar with the investigation says the planes were about 8 miles apart horizontally when the United plane maneuvered to avoid the other plane. He says he doesn't know the planes' vertical distance or whether they would have collided had they stayed on course.

Source

I think I'll take a wait and see here. It may be developing with wider coverage.

Certainly not entirely fabricated, anyway. (April 25th is the date of the report this thread was written on, too.)

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

My problem hasn't been whether the near miss happened. It was reported in the Honolulu news. The big problem here was his write up of it is utter BS. He's pushing an agenda that the airlines need to be monitored more closely than they already are, because as he claims, left to themselves, we'll never hear about incidents like this.

a reply to: Zaphod58

The incident is the focus, so I'll update as I find more on that... This has me really interested since MSM started picking up on it.

If nothing else though, researching this led me to the accident and incident databases in raw download for military and civilian flights both and going back a few decades. That alone made the effort worthwhile. (Complete registration and parts databases back 30 yrs too)

As far as the guy? Even Time Magazine has him in direct quotes, so if he lied about major portions? I'd say he's got quite a bit to be concerned about with coverage going beyond what he may have thought it would. It's taken on new energy with the AP wire piece and everything that hit from that.

When refueling the stealthy aircraft, TCAS sometimes would flip out and say "terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up" even though we would be over Kansas at 30,000 feet. Lol

The B-2 in particular wouldn't even show up on TCAS until they were 50-100 feet behind us and they open their receptacle. That was sometimes the only way to pick them up miles away. We would tell them to roll the rc and when they did we got radar contact as we were always above them.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

You're going to see a lot more of it of the FAA can't get a budget. The ATC system is over burdened as it is and it's only getting worse.

And we don't need people that don't know their head from their ass writing totally BS airline hit pieces to make things worse.