After less than six minutes in the air, a privately owned Hawker Hunter fighter jet, crossed less than two miles in front of it within a few hundred feet of its altitude . . . “There was a small initial drop that I thought was just like really bad turbulence,” passenger Steve Ulasewicz told CNN. “And then after that, there was this long free fall.”
He describes being terrified, people screaming and pandemonium in the cabin.
“I definitely thought that the plane was going down, that there was a mechanical issue with it,” Ulasewicz said. Eventually the pilots got on the intercom and told the passengers they had to maneuver the plane to avoid the midair collision.
“The crew of Southwest Flight 1496 responded to two onboard traffic alerts Friday afternoon… requiring them to climb and descend to comply with the alerts,” said Lynn Lunsford, Southwest spokesman in a statement. “Southwest is engaged with the Federal Aviation Administration to further understand the circumstances.”
The fighter jet was flying from El Paso, Texas to Oxnard, California.
The FAA is investigating. It’s not clear if the aircraft were directed so close together or if one of them was in a location where they were not supposed to be.
When the alarms sounded, the Southwest plane dropped about 475 feet and then went back up about 600 feet over the course of about a minute, according to Flightradar24. The fighter jet went up about 100 feet in just a few seconds.
Two Southwest flight attendants are being treated for injuries, but no passengers were hurt, the airline said.
The passenger jet did not declare an emergency and continued the 39-minute flight to Las Vegas, landing about nine minutes ahead of schedule.
This is both the 3rd time this week and the 3rd time I have ever heard of this.
Wtf is happening j the skies rn?
The FAA is being gutted in multiple ways by the current administration, and this is after decades of it being underfunded. This is the natural consequence.
That makes 3 near collisions with military aircraft in 5 days, all in ATC airspace.
a privately owned Hawker Hunter fighter jet
Not military.
Wheeee
You’d almost think the military has forgotten to notify when they enter civilian ATC airspace….
Or maybe a dumbass came in and fired all of the air traffic controllers?
That’s why you’d only almost think it.
This wasn’t a military aircraft, it was a privately owned 70 year old jet.
The Hawker Hunter is a WWII-era fighter jet. And the specific jet involved here seems to be registered to Hawker Hunter Aviation, a British defense contractor. So it’s a “military jet” both by design and use. It’s just not the US military.
The military in “military jet”, an adjective, is not the same as the military in “the military forgot to notify” a noun. One’s a description and the other an entity.
You’re right. And for 90% of people, “military” and “defense contractor” are synonymous.
Perhaps we 've reached that level of ignorance. Still it ain’t the same for air traffic control and law.
The question here was whether it was subject to civilian or military aviation ATC - from every report released thus far, it was under civilian authority. Obviously, yes, a fighter jet was originally a military aircraft - but that isn’t relevant at the moment, since it’s registered to an organization independent of the US military.
That is the real question. It’s not a current military jet, that model was never used by the US military it was built for the British RAF…, but It is currently owned and operated by a British defense contractor, and by some reports was flying to a US Air Force base. So it is very relevant.
It’s actually worse than that. I don’t think they’re necessarily trained to, unless they have to.
And they have entirely different rules since they follow compared to civilian aviation and they don’t generally understand, like, the zoning or the air traffic lanes, which has resulted in really catastrophic accidents in the past.
Could be wrong about this. It’s off the top of my dome.
What’d I miss? This one on Friday, the b-52 earlier this week, and?
Can someone explain to me how an individual manages to own a fighter jet??
…a privately owned Hawker Hunter fighter jet
It’s owned by a company, a British Defense Contractor in this case. Pretty common for outdated military jets actually.
But why? To show off to clients?
Not an industry that I work in, but I know that older jets are often used for general training purposes.
For instance, NASA astronauts still train in T-38 Talons, originally built between 1961-1972. The Space Shuttle Trainers were a modified Gulfstream II, introduced in 1967, before they were retired in 2012 with the Shuttle program.
The first civilian orbital mission, the Inspiration4 crew trained in a MiG-29 which is privately owned by Jared Isaacman, who led the private mission launched by SpaceX back in 2021. The mission was a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, raising over $243 Million in donations. They also performed a number of experiments while in orbit for SpaceX, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine and investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. Studies specifically intended to see the effects of orbital flight on ordinary citizens that weren’t previously screened and exhaustively trained as professional astronauts.
Older fighter jets are still good for training things at supersonic speeds, real world G forces, etc. that simulators can’t reproduce perfectly.
Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.
That’s the thing that really stood out to me the 1st time I saw this story. A fighter plane registered to a Delaware based company, that was flying to an Air Force base. Real weird.
Delaware based company means nothing. Something like 90+% of companies in the US on paper are based in Delaware because of very corporate-friendly laws, and they can do business in the rest of the country just fine.
This particular company is the US portion of a British Defense Contractor.
Maybe it was this one…
It’s probably rented out for events like air shows, maybe film and tv use too.
It is a classic 50’s era fighter. Some are sold relatively cheaply, https://historicandclassicaircraftsales.com/hawker-hunter-ga-11, but it really depends. Airworthy ones with engines are more expensive by a lot. Still, they are not in the tens of millions like you might expect.
Remember competent governance?
