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Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
- Deradon 11mo agoQuestion for any aviation expert: Would TCAS be triggered at such a low altitude on departure?
- t0mas88 11mo agoNo, TCAS alerts are inhibited at low altitude. It goes in steps by altitude (above ground) from no alerts at all, to only traffic warning but no resolutions, to resolution but no descends, to normal full operation.
- goblin89 11mo agoYes, TCAS II warns all the way down to 100m AGL (around 320ft above the ground), and they were already between 1000ft and 1500ft (~400m). It may or may not have advised what to do (to climb/descent/etc.) because that is turned off below 1000ft, and they were approximately at that altitude at the time.
- bonsai_spool 11mo agoThis happened on 10/31/25 https://avherald.com/h?article=52f72b6c&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=52f72b6c&opt=0
- fsckboy 11mo ago[flagged]
- dehrmann 11mo agoIs 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 11mo agoYes 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 11mo agoEdit: 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.)
- IshKebab 11mo agoKind 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 11mo agoWhat'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 11mo agoUnintelligible audio is a failure mode.
- tekla 11mo agoSeems to work pretty well most of the time w/ souls involved. Works better than most websites on hard lines.
- lysace 11mo agoThe canonical counter-example against voice/audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NDqZy4deDI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NDqZy4deDI JFK controller tries to communicate with Air China 981
- pedalpete 11mo agoIs 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 11mo agoYeah. 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 11mo agoAnd maybe some time to ramp back up to pre-shit-show skill levels.
- dang 11mo agoSorry for the offtopicness but would you mind emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com? I want to arrange for a repost of something you submitted.
- 7thaccount 11mo agoMe? For this comment or another? I can't imagine anything I've posted is that interesting lol.
- dang 11mo agoNot for a comment - a submission you posted some time ago.
- waiwai933 11mo agoI 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-traffic-controllers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk8.8dQq.ts2E7ZDh1TBo&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/travel/shutdown-air-traff.... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/shutdown-air-traffic-controllers-pay.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zk8.gv5m.OXx6GWmaMTUi&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/shutdown-air-.... [3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/air-traffic-controllers-pay-government-shutdown https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/air-traffic-...
- aprentic 11mo agoI was watching KBOS https://www.flightaware.com/live/airport/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.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- comeonbro 11mo agoIf 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...
- aprentic 11mo agoI'm listening to ATC for education. I'm not confident in my ability to understand it correctly. That's why I qualified my level of certainty. FWIW, the KBOS incident I saw didn't seem to be ATC either, if it was actually what I thought it was. It does seem like either of them may have been caught earlier if there had been more ATCs on staff or if they weren't as stressed or sleep deprived.
- trollied 11mo agoGovernment shutdown. ATC are not being paid. Sort your country out!
- Dumblydorr 11mo agoMost 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 11mo agoWho 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?
- coolThingsFirst 11mo agosafest mode of transportation strikes again
- rawling 11mo agohttps://youtube.com/watch?v=jgWuw-TCRkI https://youtube.com/watch?v=jgWuw-TCRkI ITA plane taking off around 1:08:15. The camera doesn't follow it but you might be able to hear someone yelling wtf around 1:08:58.
- thomascountz 11mo agoITY621 does a readback: "...climb DLREY," meaning they confirmed the departure path for 24L extends forward before heading left; which is different for 25R, which heads left shortly after takeoff: "...RNAV DOCKR."