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Wolf Blitzer delivers the most important breaking news and political, international, and national security stories of the day. Tune to The Situation Room weekdays 5-7pm ET on CNN.
October 21st, 2013
07:15 PM ET
747's almost collide in mid-air
Two 747 passenger planes nearly collided in the skies over Scotland. CNN's Chris Lawrence reports on what may have caused another near crash.
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If the air traffic controller told one plane to go right and one to go left then he broke a cardinal rule for atc by not using cardinal directions.
PS: What was wrong with the planes TCAS??? Last I checked aren't those supposed to be on all planes now?
This is such an irresponsible, fear mongering story. Aircraft are routinely at the same altitude, when going the same relative direction. Think of the hundreds of ocean flights everyday. There's not enough room before they hit the water if every flight got its own altitude. Indeed this is what keep them SAFE vs. aircraft at many different altitudes.
Truth be told there are hundreds of these miscommunications between pilots and Air Traffic Control everyday. That these two planes happened to temporarily be on a converging path is proof of how well the system works. If in a radar environment Automated ATC would see the conflict and alert controllers. Automated systems on each plane would provide a resolution long before each aircraft got too close.
Bottom line is this happens everyday and CNN is trying to look important by reporting a "near-disaster" that really was never close.
This story is absolutely horrible reporting. As stated above, the aircraft were 3 MILES APART - NOT 100 feet apart as the banner states. 3 miles is closer than they should have been, but nowhere near the 100 feet implied by this story!
This story is a horrible example of sensationalism reporting.
Seriously? The airplanes were 18 THOUSAND feet apart (3nm). Your story says they were 100 feet apart...... They didn't almost collide.....closer than they were supposed to be, but they didn't almost collide.
guys, please they did not come within 100ft of a collision. They were MILES apart horizontally! That´s as if you are claiming someone almost ran into another person who was on the other side of town who was half a floor higher. It is serious to have such a separation incident and 3 miles is already serious enough!