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> Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred 64km off the coast of Venezuela. > Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transpond

> Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred 64km off the coast of Venezuela. > Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions? One would think if there is threats somewhere, they'd first mark the region as restricted, so no public airplanes go there in the first place, then they can fly without the transponders.

DLA 11mo ago
Threats are not to civilian aircraft. If conflict occurs areas would become restricted.
deathanatos 11mo ago
If the positioning [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs) is at all close to accurate, that looks closer to 300km, with the entirety of Aruba between them & the closest point in Venezuela. (Or all of Curaçao, but I think that line is longer.) (TFA does say 64 km, though.) Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…?
- embedding-shape 11mo ago
  > Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…? If you take off from Curaçao and head like 10km west before you've actually left the island, you end up pretty much within 64km of Adicora, Venezuela. Probably what they meant I guess.
tjohns 11mo ago
> Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions? As a pilot, I can tell you it happens all the time. Even in US domestic airspace. Transponder use is optional for the military, and they will turn them off for some training missions. (Or in this case, a real mission.) No, they don't close the airspace when this is being done. The pilots of both aircraft (civilian and military) are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. The military aircraft should also be keeping an eye on primary radar. (Transponder use is also optional for some civilian aircraft, btw.)
- 0_____0 11mo ago
  I've been buzzed by a flight of military helicopters in the New Mexico desert. Not intentionally, they just happened to overfly my tent, and I just happened to have cell service somehow. I checked ADSB and sure enough they were flying dark.
  - ceejayoz 11mo ago
    Not necessarily; the same remoteness that made cell signal sparse likely makes ADS-B ground stations unlikely. There has to be one in range for it to show up places like FlightAware. Plenty of dead spots; you can help expand the network! https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build/ https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build/
    - FireBeyond 11mo ago
      I have an ADS-B receiver on a computer here, and am overhead a number of flight paths for JBLM. The above comment is accurate, plenty of local training helicopter flights will be fully or partly dark (lights and/or transponders off), looking at my receiver's raw output stream.
  - miahi 11mo ago
    ADSB is not mandatory in the US below FL100 or FL180 (10000/18000 feet), that covers most helicopter flights. It depends also on the website you are using to track. I have an ADSB receiver that publishes to multiple tracking websites (the same data, unfiltered), and not all of them publish all the data. Flightradar24 doesn't show most of the military aircraft - I can see them on my local tracking interface but they are not shown on their website.
- crote 11mo ago
  > The pilots of both aircraft are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. How's that supposed to work with Instrument Flight Rules, for which you literally train by wearing glasses which block your view outside the window [0]? And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)? It'll go from impossible-to-see to collision in a few seconds - which is why you won't see any "they didn't look outside the window enough" in the report of accidents like Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907. The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic. [0]: https://www.sportys.com/jeppshades-ifr-training-glasses.html https://www.sportys.com/jeppshades-ifr-training-glasses.html

DLA 11mo ago

Threats are not to civilian aircraft. If conflict occurs areas would become restricted.

deathanatos 11mo ago

If the positioning [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs) is at all close to accurate, that looks closer to 300km, with the entirety of Aruba between them & the closest point in Venezuela. (Or all of Curaçao, but I think that line is longer.) (TFA does say 64 km, though.) Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…?

embedding-shape 11mo ago
> Edit: I'm not sure about 64 km. The 64km is for the Curaçao departing flight, but Curaçao's airport is itself 80 km from Venezuela, and they headed north pretty immediately? I.e., … they would have never been < 80 km…? If you take off from Curaçao and head like 10km west before you've actually left the island, you end up pretty much within 64km of Adicora, Venezuela. Probably what they meant I guess.

tjohns 11mo ago

> Is it actually common for military aircrafts with transponders off to mix and match with public traffic in activate flight regions? As a pilot, I can tell you it happens all the time. Even in US domestic airspace. Transponder use is optional for the military, and they will turn them off for some training missions. (Or in this case, a real mission.) No, they don't close the airspace when this is being done. The pilots of both aircraft (civilian and military) are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. The military aircraft should also be keeping an eye on primary radar. (Transponder use is also optional for some civilian aircraft, btw.)

0_____0 11mo ago
I've been buzzed by a flight of military helicopters in the New Mexico desert. Not intentionally, they just happened to overfly my tent, and I just happened to have cell service somehow. I checked ADSB and sure enough they were flying dark.
- ceejayoz 11mo ago
  Not necessarily; the same remoteness that made cell signal sparse likely makes ADS-B ground stations unlikely. There has to be one in range for it to show up places like FlightAware. Plenty of dead spots; you can help expand the network! https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build/ https://www.flightaware.com/adsb/piaware/build/
  - FireBeyond 11mo ago
    I have an ADS-B receiver on a computer here, and am overhead a number of flight paths for JBLM. The above comment is accurate, plenty of local training helicopter flights will be fully or partly dark (lights and/or transponders off), looking at my receiver's raw output stream.
- miahi 11mo ago
  ADSB is not mandatory in the US below FL100 or FL180 (10000/18000 feet), that covers most helicopter flights. It depends also on the website you are using to track. I have an ADSB receiver that publishes to multiple tracking websites (the same data, unfiltered), and not all of them publish all the data. Flightradar24 doesn't show most of the military aircraft - I can see them on my local tracking interface but they are not shown on their website.
crote 11mo ago
> The pilots of both aircraft are supposed to be keeping a constant visual watch for traffic. How's that supposed to work with Instrument Flight Rules, for which you literally train by wearing glasses which block your view outside the window [0]? And how are you supposed to spot an airplane coming at you with a closing speed of 1000 mph (1600 kmh)? It'll go from impossible-to-see to collision in a few seconds - which is why you won't see any "they didn't look outside the window enough" in the report of accidents like Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907. The whole point of Air Traffic Control is to control air traffic. Sure, there's plenty of uncontrolled airspace where you do indeed have to look out for traffic, but it's uncontrolled precisely because it rarely if ever sees commercial traffic. [0]: https://www.sportys.com/jeppshades-ifr-training-glasses.html https://www.sportys.com/jeppshades-ifr-training-glasses.html