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 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.