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.
Immediately from the headline my first reaction was “well, the rate of actual collisions is near 0”, so either they’re very good at dodging each other, or what they deem as a “near collision” is actually quite a wide berth.
But then, this is the journalistic integrity we’ve come to expect from gizmodo.
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.
which was a result of the one crew not following the TCAS instruction.
That is serious misinterpretation. that crew followed their TCAS until they got conflicting instructions from the ATC…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Überlingen_mid-air_collision
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.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/22/politics/phil-washington-committee-vote/index.html
The GOP aide said that because Republicans remain unified in their opposition to Washington’s prospective leadership, “his nomination is on life support.”
About a nomination made by Biden last year. Without a majority he can’t force it through.
Nominations just go through the senate, not the house of representatives. Democrats DO hold a majority in the senate.
I don’t want to let Republicans off the hook – they are obstructionists and government abolitionists, and this is primarily due to Ted Cruz’s opposition – but no, this is happening entirely under a Democratic held chamber.
I just want to point out how common this is, btw: Democrats plead for votes to get control over government, and then when they get it, somehow they still always find a way to insist that they can’t do anything because they just don’t have enough control. Even when they’re in charge, the media and the party advance the narrative that they’re not REALLY in charge.
Since they’re a little less totalitarian than GOP they don’t force everybody to vote with the party as aggressively. When the majority is narrow it like now that means Biden can’t force it through if even just 1 or 2 people aren’t on board.
And then you can look at the track record of the specific senators who won’t go along. The party leadership would have to push alternative candidates to get them voted out to make that happen. But do you want them to have that degree of centralized control?
I mean this with no disrespect: I think you should examine why your response to criticism of the performance of elected officials is to focus on justifying the behavior of those you view as allies.
Can I suggest that you view it like a sports team? If you were on a sports team and the team lost, even if you thought that they were at a serious disadvantage, you’d watch the game tape and say, “Do you see here? We should’ve subbed out this player, and here, we should have avoided leaving this gap in the defense.”
I think you’re demonstrating a conditioned response to generate permission structures for a preferred party. I think the media programs us to view all criticism of our preferred party as a threat to their success, and the only response to criticism to be defending their actions instead of asking how we can leverage power better.
For contrast, compare Biden’s nominees to lead the FCC and to the FTC. Biden nominated Lina Khan to the FCC in March of 2021 and he and Chuck Schumer got her confirmed in June. Under a 50-50 senate. And she’s been an absolute all-star. This is what I wanna see.
Conversely, Biden waited NINE MONTHS into his presidency to appoint a head to the FTC. This has huge consequences. The FTC was captured by the internet service providers under Trump, and they can’t reverse these terrible policies until they get a new Democratic appointee. After a nine month wait, the nomination stalled for a year, and now we’re in year 3 of Biden’s presidency and still living under Trump’s net neutrality rules. There isn’t a reason why this is okay. It’s a fumble. It’s a self-goal. If you want Biden to get reelected, don’t spend time telling me why this is actually fine, join me in saying, “Hey! Wake up and take care of this! I’ve seen you guys do this with other nominees, so I know you can, so do it!”
Our job is to push the government to act, not run defense when it doesn’t.
I don’t view them as allies, just less terrible. I specifically do not treat it as sports because that’s far too simplified.
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.”
Wow, I could actually hear George talking as I read that. Damn, I miss him.
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.
I wish. I’m so entirely sick of sensationalism and shitty science writing.
It’s only going to get worse with AI writing the stories.
