[HN Gopher] Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airli...
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Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA
[video]
Author : goblin89
Score : 94 points
Date : 2025-11-08 19:26 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| This happened on 10/31/25
| https://avherald.com/h?article=52f72b6c&opt=0
| dehrmann wrote:
| Is this interpretation right? There are parallel runways, and the
| plane departing on the runway on the right turned left, into the
| path of the plane departing parallel on the left?
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Yes exactly. They were within 1000 yards of each other and less
| than 5 seconds from colliding according to some videos
| analyzing the GPS data. If you listen to the ATC chat, the
| American Airlines pilot noticed the other plane going the wrong
| way himself and made a proactive change to avoid collision
| without waiting for ATC. Although the traffic controllers did
| notice and quickly gave out new directions, it may have been
| too late if the pilot didn't act.
| goblin89 wrote:
| Edit: They were handed off to departures before tower's
| traffic warning. The near-collision occurred in the middle of
| tower-departures handoff. Tower was warning them of traffic
| in hopes they were still on the frequency but they probably
| weren't, and they noticed traffic just before they contacted
| departures.
|
| On ATC side, maybe departures could have been more proactive
| and warn AA of traffic together with tower. On AA side, maybe
| they could have been listening to tower for a while as they
| are tuning in to departures (there were 10-20 seconds where
| AA was not listening to tower anymore and did not come in on
| departures yet). Seems hard to blame either of them in
| particular.
|
| Original comment as is:
|
| If the video is to be believed, the tower did tell American
| right away (at 1:36 in the video, way before any visible
| corrections by either plane were made) that there is traffic
| and to stop the climb. It's unclear whether American paid
| attention to tower, because seconds later they came in on
| another frequency saying they have traffic in sight. When
| asked afterwards whether tower gave them a heads-up they
| denied it.
|
| Of course, ITA paid even less attention, considering how they
| were the original cause of this all and how for 30 seconds
| they ignored ATC's request to turn right immediately (issued
| at about the same time that AA was warned about traffic).
|
| This doesn't contradict that what AA did was proactive and
| possibly life-saving, but I have a suspicion that the initial
| deviation by ITA could have been benign if both crews paid
| their full attention to comms: what if ITA started to turn
| 270 immediately as they are told to (while continuing to
| climb up from 1500), and American simply stopped their climb
| at 1500? I am not 100% confident.
|
| That said, I would also agree ATC could have been more
| proactive, harder on ITA (instead of just telling them to
| turn again 30 seconds later). Presumably they are strapped
| for resources right now.
|
| (There could be errors in the above in case the chart and
| different radio communication tracks in the video are out of
| sync with each other, which is possible.)
| jvanderbot wrote:
| They said they had traffic in sight in response. As in "yes
| I see them". I believe their avoidance maneuver was a climb
| change.
| goblin89 wrote:
| If "in response" means replying back to tower on tower's
| frequency, then no. After the lady on _tower_ frequency
| told them about traffic (twice), they came in on
| _departures_ frequency (it was a fresh contact, they
| started with "good afternoon, American 4 with you") and
| said they have traffic in sight.
|
| Edited after I rewatched the video:
|
| 1. Tower handed them off to departures.
|
| 2. They said bye and stopped listening to tower.
|
| 3. ITA veered left.
|
| 4. Tower noticed it and warned them, hoping they are
| still listening.
|
| 5. They were evidently not listening to tower anymore,
| and did not contact departures yet, when they noticed
| traffic themselves.
|
| 6. They greeted departures saying they see traffic, and
| veered left.
|
| Later at 2:45 American said tower didn't give them a
| heads-up. The fact that departures asked them about it
| could mean that departures thought they were still
| listening to tower.
|
| Pretty sure the pilots have a second radio and could be
| listening to both departures and tower during handoff,
| but it's unclear whether that's routine. If they did it,
| they would have heard tower's original warning.
|
| > I believe their avoidance maneuver was a climb change.
|
| According to the chart in the video, AA veered to the
| left. This maneuver started around 1:51 in the video,
| which is at least 10 seconds after tower warned them of
| traffic and instructed to stop the climb for the first
| time around 1:38.
|
| I don't know if they stopped the climb around 1:38. _If_
| we know for sure that they stopped the climb around 1:38
| when tower told them so, then there is a good chance they
| were indeed still listening to tower and heard the
| traffic warning. _If_ that's the case, maybe they thought
| that stopping the climb 10 seconds earlier was
| insufficient (and tower was wrong about it).
| gosub100 wrote:
| One theory in the comments was that ITA loaded the wrong
| departure in their computer and just flew it without
| noticing that they were on the wrong side of the airport
| and/or ATC's prior instructions contradicted the electronic
| plan.
| sdh9 wrote:
| They had the correct SID, but the wrong runway.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Kind of blows my mind how primitive this whole system still is.
| Audio quality is really bad. They're sending instructions by
| voice. The way they know who is speaking is by just saying their
| callsign with every message.
|
| There's got to be a better solution surely?
| SecretDreams wrote:
| What's the most reliable situation you can think of that will
| never fail and drive better audio quality?
|
| This is a field where they need more .9999s than Amazon.
| julianlam wrote:
| Unintelligible audio is a failure mode.
| tekla wrote:
| Seems to work pretty well most of the time w/ souls
| involved. Works better than most websites on hard lines.
| lysace wrote:
| The canonical counter-example against voice/audio:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NDqZy4deDI
|
| _JFK controller tries to communicate with Air China 981_
| tekla wrote:
| You mean a situation where a pilot who is supposed to
| know English in the parlance of global aviation lingo
| seems to be playing dumb?
| lysace wrote:
| That is a unique thought.
| tekla wrote:
| I'm assuming you don't listen to ATC traffic much, and
| have general HN assumption you just know better than
| everyone else.
| lysace wrote:
| Maybe assume less.
| ryandrake wrote:
| One of the YouTube commenters contributed some much-
| needed nuance. JFK Ground added to the confusion by
| repeatedly refusing to use standard phraseology, and
| failed to maintain professionalism, getting audibly angry
| and impatient. Both sides of the radio conversation had
| problems.
| lysace wrote:
| Exactly, voice comms has a large number of disadvantages.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| Amazon is up to, what, one and half nines right now?
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| 5 9s in 95.79999%
| montecarl wrote:
| I think that the audio we are listening too is from some ground
| recording station that isn't necessarily near the airport. We
| aren't listening to a recording of what the pilots heard or
| what air traffic control hears.
| lysace wrote:
| This is one of the highest quality recordings of such traffic
| that I have heard. They are usually a lot worse.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Yup. Audio is sourced from volunteers with home radios &
| antennas. Quality will be dependant on how far the nearest
| one was from LAX and their personal setup. Not necessarily
| representative of quality that the controller/pilot was
| hearing.
| dweekly wrote:
| Technically correct...and yet let's not kid ourselves that
| even with a nice radio and a pair of Bose A30's, it can be
| hard to tease out exactly what's being said when in a
| congested airspace.
| aprentic wrote:
| https://www.liveatc.net/
|
| If you want to listen in yourself.
| proteal wrote:
| It has to do with how ATC needs to be able to communicate with
| all planes in the air, even ones built 100 years ago. They have
| to use radio so everyone can hear everyone else. There's no
| other technology that is as ubiquitous as radio, so they have
| to work with what they've got. Upgrading to other stuff would
| be an absolute nightmare, though they are making progress on
| less critical fronts.
| mmooss wrote:
| Couldn't comms broadcast in multiple parallel modes, like
| cell phone traffic?: More clear (probably digital)
| transmissions in on band, and for backward compatibility, old
| radio transmissions in another.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think one of the best things they could add would be an
| electronic drawing tablet for ATC to draw a flight path on a
| map and pipe it directly into the pilots EFIS or HUD. It's
| not fool-proof, but in high density airspace, it seems more
| efficient to be able to draw a curve and press a button than
| try to verbally describe it. Of course one major pitfall is
| you cannot draw in 3D.
| db48x wrote:
| That would be slower and ironically less precise than what
| we already have, which is navigation by named waypoints.
| bigbuppo wrote:
| They already have something better than that. It's called a
| published departure procedure that pilots are supposed to
| follow. In this case, one of the pilots failed to follow
| the published departure procedure and came close to being
| on the next season of Mayday: Air Disaster.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Right? Just in a car, we know that talking to someone _in the
| car itself_ has adverse effects on situational awareness, and
| talking to someone on a phone is much worse than that. But even
| after all the research and training that goes into human
| factors in aviation ... we can 't do better than confusing,
| poor quality, AM band party lines during critical phases of
| flight?
| tekla wrote:
| Would you rather them read text messages on their iPads?
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| Oh of course, those are the only two options: either an AM
| band party line or text messages on an iPad. Nothing else
| is possible.
| tekla wrote:
| Open to suggestions. Keep in mind I've worked on Aircraft
| control systems and have a very strong opinion on
| reliability and crew management.
|
| I also note that the budget isn't infinite nor do these
| aircraft like running electron apps.
|
| Also note that not all (if not most) aircraft are not
| brand new and so would need all to be retrofitted and re-
| rerated w/ any new system and every single pilot
| retrained.
|
| This requirement also includes systems for general
| aviation pilots and both to be able to sync with each
| other.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| > Also note that not all (if not most) aircraft are not
| brand new and so would need all to be retrofitted and re-
| rerated w/ any new system and every single pilot
| retrained
|
| Ah yes, I forgot, we never introduce new aircraft
| technology because it's too hard. Too bad we don't, it
| would be great to fit aircraft, with, say, anti-collision
| transponders and advanced ground proximity systems. Oh
| well, my mistake for even bringing it up.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Suggest a specific idea, instead of this theatrical
| sarcasm.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Is your problem a trust issue with always-updating AWS-
| hosted randomly-banned silently-breaking framework-rotating
| modern web apps, or something fundamental with GUI based
| systems?
|
| I mean, I wouldn't trust a literal _iPad_ , but I'm not
| sure if I distrust an entirely _figurative_ iPad.
| db48x wrote:
| Keep in mind that the person talking and listening to the
| radio is not the pilot flying the airplane. Pilot and Copilot
| alternate which job they are doing. It's not the same as the
| driver of a car talking on a phone.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Talking to someone on the phone who has a birds eye view of
| the road, other drivers, and the map, and only addresses you
| to help you drive? in no way possible reduces your
| situational awareness. I refuse to believe that.
|
| Now idle chatting with coworker Wendy about dinner will take
| you out of that situation and make you more dangerous.
| PriorityLeft wrote:
| CPDLC is text messaging between controllers and pilots. It is
| widely used amongst most carriers. It does not work for time
| critical situations. Voice and radio is the only solution
| that will work when you don't have time to type a message.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I want you to very carefully consider the better options.
|
| Perhaps they type instructions? And hope someone reads them?
|
| Perhaps they drag and drop vectors? Then what, a radial menu
| with emergency modal screens?
|
| Or maybe they click some buttons, forcing the occasional look
| away from the screen?
|
| Maybe AI could do it all?
|
| For this, voice is perfect. We have been following instructions
| by voice since humans could grunt. We do not require anyone to
| look away from the screen (ATC) or look down from the window
| outside (pilot) for any reason.
|
| We do not require rebroadcast because everyone can hear and
| take initiative if required.
|
| By what interface, specifically, should someone required to fly
| an airplane interact with ATC while flying that airplane? By
| what interface should someone who needs to see where everyone
| is all the time be able to contact that pilot that cannot look
| away from the world outside ever and cannot use their hands for
| anything but flying at a critical time?
|
| Chesterton's ATC.
| dweekly wrote:
| As a commercial pilot, your response is a _little_ glib and
| kind of ignores the meaningful advances that have been made
| with D-ATIS, ADS-B In, CPDLC, DUATS, XM weather, etc. Voice
| is absolutely not perfect, analog FM audio often comes
| through garbled, pilots have to wait their turn on a busy
| single-user channel for timely information, etc.
|
| This doesn't even begin to touch on the complexities that
| will come from full integration of drones and eVTOL into the
| national airspace, which will absolutely swamp a one-speaker-
| at-a-time analog FM comms system.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Yeah I probably over reacted. But the knee jerk reactions
| I've seen to some perfectly reasonable systems just wear
| you down.
|
| You raise good points but I would be very surprised to see
| digital data streams ever replace voice, and drone control
| is just a completely different problem. But as you say
| we'll see.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| For starters, ADS-B is being rolled out, allows planes to 'see'
| each other and respond in real time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan...
| sdh9 wrote:
| It's been required in the US since 2020. But, ADS-B would not
| have played a factor in this incident.
| Loughla wrote:
| Other than voice how would you send instructions that don't
| really on changing your focus? I can listen while doing other
| things. What else would you do?
| fujigawa wrote:
| What do you propose that is better? VC-backed smartphone apps?
|
| Aircraft have much better quality electronics than a $20
| tabletop radio located some distance away by whoever is ripping
| the stream.
| evil-olive wrote:
| > Audio quality is really bad.
|
| as the video says at the beginning, the audio is sourced from
| LiveATC, which is a network of volunteers with their own radio
| equipment [0] who tune in to ATC frequencies and then
| livestream them.
|
| those volunteers are by necessity not at the airport itself,
| but some distance away. and the audio is compressed to 16kbps
| MP3 for livestreaming purposes.
|
| this means the sound quality we're hearing is going to be worse
| (significantly worse, in some cases) than what the pilots and
| controllers actually hear.
|
| > They're sending instructions by voice.
|
| I get that it's 2025 and it's tempting to say "everything
| should be a text message". but remember that there's 2 pilots
| in the aircraft, the Pilot Flying and the Pilot Monitoring [1].
|
| under normal circumstances, the PM handles talking to ATC
| (among other duties). but both pilots have headsets that allow
| them to hear transmissions from ATC. and crucially for the
| Pilot Flying, they hear those messages _without taking their
| eyes away from actually flying_.
|
| modern aircraft do have a text message system of sorts [2] but
| there is a very good reason why the crucial ATC instruction in
| this case ("turn right heading 270 immediately") happens via
| voice and not an ACARS message.
|
| also, it's important to remember that airline pilots in the US
| have a _minimum_ of 1500 hours of flying time, and pilots
| flying an A330 on an LAX-Rome route probably have significantly
| more than that. we 're watching a 5-minute video and going "oh
| it's a bit hard for me to follow this" but for actual
| commercial pilots this radio chatter is routine and something
| they have been practicing for years.
|
| 0: https://www.liveatc.net/faq/
|
| 1: https://skybrary.aero/articles/pilot-flying-pf-and-pilot-
| mon...
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS
| pedalpete wrote:
| Is this significantly different from the near mid-air collisions
| that happen on a regular basis?
|
| The audio does an excellent job of showing a layperson how
| difficult it is to interpret and who's going wear based on sound,
| and then I had to go back through the video to see the turn.
|
| These people aren't being paid to do this right now? Is that
| right? I'm not American, but that's what I've heard.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Yeah. It's a super stressful job that doesn't pay well normally
| and now these people are having to drive Uber on the side to
| pay their mortgages and put food on the table. I'm definitely
| not flying until this is sorted out.
| edoceo wrote:
| And maybe some time to ramp back up to pre-shit-show skill
| levels.
| waiwai933 wrote:
| I can't speak to the first question, but as to the second,
| correct, US air traffic controllers are not currently being
| paid.
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/travel/shutdown-air-
| traff....
|
| [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/shutdown-
| air-....
|
| [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/air-
| traffic-...
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| Why are they turning up for work?
| ezfe wrote:
| Because they will be back-paid when the government reopens
| and if they stop showing up then they will be fired. Now,
| you could ask: won't they be able to get a job back later,
| who knows.
| fujigawa wrote:
| People of high integrity generally hold these jobs.
|
| Not Googlers threatening a general strike because they took
| onion bagels off the cafeteria menu.
| Deradon wrote:
| Question for any aviation expert: Would TCAS be triggered at such
| a low altitude on departure?
| aprentic wrote:
| I was watching KBOS https://www.flightaware.com/live/airport/KBOS
| on Thursday morning and saw a couple of Cape Air flights that
| looked like they were within 500 feet of each other. I suspect
| we'll be hearing more of these stories soon.
| comeonbro wrote:
| If you are casually listening to ATC for fun then you should be
| able to recognize that the event in this story is not ATC
| error...
| trollied wrote:
| Government shutdown. ATC are not being paid.
|
| Sort your country out!
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| Most Americans have zero agency in the matter. We vote once a
| year or two, most of our states or districts aren't
| competitive, and the candidates we do elect can ignore their
| constituents easily.
| theodric wrote:
| Who are you yelling at? Do you think the Trump administration
| reads Hacker News? What do you expect the average American
| taxpayer to do to fix a government shutdown?
| hdgvhicv wrote:
| General strike. Certainly government employees should be on
| strike. Starting with secret service.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| safest mode of transportation strikes again
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