Terrifying near miss as two packed passenger planes came with just ONE HUNDRED feet after all four

I remember we were going to the Canaries when I saw a plane going the opposite direction about a mile below us. Bit scary...

reply to post by AutumnWitch657


That's a lot more near miss than this was. Back in the 80s the requirements were 2000 feet vertical separation. That was before RVSM.

But seriously....somebody explain the term "near miss"...

Peace

reply to post by scotsdavy1


I seem to remember being in a holding pattern outside of Tokyo and seeing another airliner in the pattern at seemingly the same altitude, being able to tell the make of the airplane and the company it was flying for. If I had my binos with me I could tell you who had their window shade up or down.

reply to post by operation mindcrime


LOL, so true.

Eh, no big deal. We used to touch other airplanes all the time in the tanker.

The closest they came to each other was about 2.8 nautical miles.

You can see that on the diagram in the OP where it says "1100ft V/2.8nm H56" - that translates as 1100ft vertical separation and 2.8 nautical miles horizontal separation. That is data point HCPA2 1256:35

At data point 1, FL340CPA1 1256:23, they were 100ft apart vertically, and 3.9 nautical miles apart horizontally.

It is far too close - but it is not "terrifying" unless you are a headline writer.

The ICAO airprox rating for this was "C" -

C - No risk of collision. The risk classification of an aircraft proximity in which no risk of collision has existed.

- source and also from here

I've asked them what their ERC ratings consist of!

their report is available here - it is about 85% down the document, which is a 2.6mb download.

I think it's funny how when the news reports a near miss between aircraft people think they came a few feet from crashing. A near miss in aviation terms is so much different than what the common misconception is.

Not to go off thread but i have a question to someone that may have the answer in this forum. I was flying from Ohare to LaGuarida a few years back and saw a silver four engine prop plane out to the right side window it looked a few hundred feet lower than us but was flying at an angle as it may have pass directly in front of us. I asked the co pilot when we landed if that was normal and was answered with what plane. We were at about 37k Any prop planes fly that high

reply to post by ed1320


Any that are pressurized can fly that high. It could have been a C-130 or P-3, or a couple others.

Technically any could really, but the crew would require oxygen and bulky flight gear to keep from freezing.

FYI the risk management model they use is available here on Skybrary

superman2012
reply to post by scotsdavy1

 

I would scream if I was looking out my window and saw that! lol I would scream.

A few years back i shot a feature about a scout plane flying regular passes over the area were i live looking for possible forest fires. They do this every year as an early detection program. Anyway, we were in a small very old cessna of some kind, the journalist had fallen asleep in the back and we were cruisin north at 2000ft. All of a sudden i see this other plane appear at the horizon more or less head to head with us and pass at our right side. I thought to myself, is it supposed to be that close and asked the pilot if he was aware of the plane that just passed us. He looked out through the back window totally unaware of the plane (it passed that close and that quick) and then back at me, we were both like, what the h*** and then went on with our business. He flew the plane and i shot pictures. Looking back at it in retrospective i guess someone either had a really bad day at work or there was some kind of transponder (eh, the thing that goes biip and tells out location? I dont know much about those technical things :-) ) failure because that plane sure was to close.

Anyway, my point is really that our reaction was more that of beeing puzzled than scared. I have no idea if the pilot filed some sort of report afterwards but i assume so altough we were both in a state of "did that really happen?".