English is not my native language, but shouldn't the headline have read "SFO near miss would have triggered aviation disaster"? "Might" seems to indicate that something else happened afterwards as a possible result of the near miss
English is my first language, and the more I read the headline, the more I see it as
"Something terrible happened, and the near miss is possibly the cause".
The story was very interesting. The title is technically valid. But as another native speaker I think it's very confusing.
"Would have triggered" implies neither the disaster nor the near-miss happened, so I think the most unambiguous phrasing would have been "could have triggered".
OTOH I've seen native speakers use headlines like "Why this works?" (which by my understanding of the language shouldn't have a question mark), so IDK.
People will often use Could have when they mean might have.
To be accurately and unambiguously understood by everyone it should be SFO near miss could have triggered aviation disaster but didn't. Since the completely unambiguous phrasing is not very elegant then Could have would be preferable, but with the understanding that for some people it will still have some ambiguity that needs resolving by actually reading the article.
In this case it doesn't, the headline can be interpreted in slightly different ways but is not wrong (or really that ambiguous) as written. Standard headline-speak for 'something happened that was a possible cause for something else that also happened' is 'may have caused' like here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/science/bright-nights-noc...