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.
That makes 3 near collisions with military aircraft in 5 days, all in ATC airspace.
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?