Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxboone | Hacker News Reader

After the near miss from JetBlue, there was another near miss with a business jet yesterday morning: https://nos.nl/l/2594640

ATC audio: https://youtu.be/Hto6aTt-X7A?si=2J-NnaXIcOnnWIqS

View on HN

& the ATC audio on the same channel, but for the flight in TFA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs

1) WTF is with the ATC in both of those

2) Why aren't the military craft listening to the local flight channel? Aren't you supposed to monitor local traffic? Especially when flying without a transponder? It's not like you can't listen to multiple channels at the same time!

What's wrong with the ATC in those videos?

For the business jet one, ATC vectored the private jet directly into the crossing traffic. Clearly a giant mistake.

That video has a limited and likely-not-accurate perspective of the planes. I'm not sure we can say it's "clearly" anything from that.

Also, ATC said they were making irregular turns.

Military aircraft mostly do not have civilian VHF radio, only military UHF radio. They can only communicate with civilian aircraft by using civilian ATC as a go-between, and only if the civilian ATC is equipped with military UHF radio. In the US, this military equipment is standard at civilian ATC sites for this reason.

Why don't they have at least a receive-only radio? I can understand if they're averse to someone keying up and accidentally broadcasting Secret Military Stuff on the civilian frequency, but a an air-band capable VHF receiver is less than $100 as a consumer buying single units. Surely the MIC could find a way to add one for just $10k as cheap insurance against losing a $5 million plane in a tragic and avoidable accident?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com