Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
44 comments
·November 8, 2025dehrmann
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
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
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
They said they had traffic in sight in response. As in "yes I see them". I believe their avoidance maneuver was a climb change.
gosub100
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.
pedalpete
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.
waiwai933
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-...
7thaccount
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
And maybe some time to ramp back up to pre-shit-show skill levels.
IshKebab
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?
jvanderbot
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.
Loughla
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?
montecarl
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.
aprentic
If you want to listen in yourself.
appreciatorBus
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.
lysace
This is one of the highest quality recordings of such traffic that I have heard. They are usually a lot worse.
12_throw_away
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?
db48x
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.
tekla
Would you rather them read text messages on their iPads?
12_throw_away
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.
proteal
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
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
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
That would be slower and ironically less precise than what we already have, which is navigation by named waypoints.
bigbuppo
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.
Kim_Bruning
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
It’s been required in the US since 2020. But, ADS-B would not have played a factor in this incident.
SecretDreams
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.
bigbuppo
Amazon is up to, what, one and half nines right now?
Question for any aviation expert: Would TCAS be triggered at such a low altitude on departure?