JetBlue flight averts mid-air collision with US Air Force jet
95 comments
·December 15, 2025maxboone
After the near miss from JetBlue, there was another near miss with a business jet yesterday morning: https://nos.nl/l/2594640
deathanatos
& the ATC audio on the same channel, but for the flight in TFA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcs1LCjhcs
pradmatic
Why was the Air Force plane’s transponder turned off? This is negligence that almost killed a plane full of people and endangered a national security operation. Outrageous.
ceejayoz
Because it’s flying near Venezuela, who we’re currently fucking with militarily.
bdangubic
we wouldn’t be doing that, we voted for President that will end all the wars, not start new ones
Obscurity4340
Thank you for buying my bridge, no refunds asked and zero money back down
wrs
I think you have "war" confused with "blowing up people we're suspicious of". It goes perfectly with "imprisoning and/or deporting people we're suspicious of".
foota
If you thought you were, you were tricked.
antonymoose
Nicolas, Uday, and Qusay Maduro have 48 hours to leave Venezuela. Until then, we have not launched a special military operation.
schmuckonwheels
Common sense would dictate that a military aircraft conducting military operations off the coast of a hostile nation tend to not want to broadcast their position to the world. So not outrageous, just unfortunate. It's extremely common.
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trhway
On the other side it is perfectly visible on radar (and can be heard (and with jet having its own characteristic signature it can be tracked even by WWII microphone array like they did back then) and visible in binoculars from large distance in nice Caribbean weather), so it is hiding only from civilians. Security by obscurity kind of. That is especially so in the case of a slow large non-maneuvering tanker plane like here.
And why would a tanker plane come close to and even enter the hostile airspace?! may be one has to check Hegseth's Signal to get an answer for that, probably it is something like "big plane -> Scary!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mUbmJ1-sNs.
appreciatorBus
The information broadcast by transponder is significantly more precise than what you will get with radar, microphone array, or binoculars.
GPS Lat & Long Barometric Altitude Ground speed & track angle Rate of climb/descent
All updated every second or so.
lovich
[flagged]
adastra22
> a national security operation
You answered your own question here.
Military planes doing military things always fly with their transponder off. It would be suicide not to.
ceejayoz
Military planes often deliberately have them on; not every mission is secretive. You can often see NATO planes on FlightAware in the Black Sea clearly keeping an eye on the Ukraine theatre.
Example: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/FORTE10/history/20230821...
FireBeyond
And they often deliberately have them off, even for training flights, at least looking at my ADS-B receivers raw output and correlating to FA/FR24/etc.
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1
The US could issue a notice of an Alert Area where military operations are in progress AND could coordinate with Dutch airspace authorities.
US AWACS has the capability to identify civilian aircraft and route military traffic well clear of civil traffic.
malvim
They could also not invade a country that did nothing to attack them, but I guess that’s asking too much.
rd07
It is the US, what do you expect from them?
I know I will get a downvote from this reply
matheusmoreira
Everyone expects war from americans but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if Trump chickened out.
testbjjl
We can arrest Maduro for drug trafficking and then pardon him later for being set up by Biden.
matheusmoreira
Slap him with sanctions for human rights violations then drop them and invite him to the white house.
mlacks
Notice was put out NOV
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/us_restrictions...
AniseAbyss
[dead]
dehrmann
In other news, the National Defense Authorization Act working its way through congress is trying to loosen restrictions around DCA that were put in place after a military helicopter collided with a passenger jet.
mg794613
Being allies really doesn't mean anything anymore, does it?
I really wonder how long it will take to rebuild all these burned bridges.
loeg
What does allies have to do with this situation? Both aircraft involved were American.
arianvanp
Happened in Dutch Caribbean controlled Airspace
nabakin
TIL Europe still has some presence in the Americas. Thought all of that was gone with the Monroe Doctrine
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stronglikedan
meh, bridges get constantly burned and rebuilt between allies and enemies both - just another day really
ceejayoz
You run into trouble if someone manages to set all of them on fire at once.
yearolinuxdsktp
So never fly in or out of DCA, and avoid anywhere near Venezuela.
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jMyles
Call me crazy, but I think any time, any where, without any exceptions whatsoever, someone wants to fly a multi-ton chunk of metal, they need to broadcast telemetry in a cleartext, open standard.
I understand that this might be disruptive to people who want to drop explosives on other people, and while this disruption is a fantastic benefit, it's only a side-effect.
coldtea
Nothing beats a JetBlue holiday
DLA
Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Even at full cruising speed of 500-600MPH (less because the JetBlue was still on a climb) the civilian aircraft would cover a mile in 6-7 seconds, so we are talking 18 to 24 seconds to close 3-4 miles.
Also, it a common for military aircraft to not have a transponder on, especially in the vicinity of threats. Without a transponder the civilian aircraft TCAS/ACAS would not warn about traffic.
Not sure how far off the coast of Venezuela this occurred, but there are some very real SAM threats the Air Force aircraft would need to worry about.
(edited typos)
Retric
Large aircraft take a while to avoid collisions due to their size and both jets are in motion. So this could have been within 5-10 seconds of a collision depending on specifics. The critical issue is the civilian aircraft “took evasive action on Friday to avoid a mid-air collision with a U.S. Air Force tanker plane near Venezuela, a pilot said in an air traffic control recording.”
Which needs to be reported as it then can impact other air traffic to avoid further issues.
ralferoo
Even if the military plane had its transponder off, the civilian plane didn't. The military pilot had no justification for not knowing the civilian plane was there and at a minimum adjusting its altitude to make this a non issue.
ceejayoz
And the tanker was likely supervised from an AWACS aircraft that probably should’ve flagged this, too.
embedding-shape
> 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.
tjohns
> 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
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.
deathanatos
If the positioning [here](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…?
DLA
Threats are not to civilian aircraft. If conflict occurs areas would become restricted.
EdwardDiego
> Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss. Even at full cruising speed of 500-600MPH (less because the JetBlue was still on a climb) the civilian aircraft would cover a mile in 6-7 seconds, so we are talking 18 to 24 seconds to close 3-4 miles.
Sweet, so they've got less than half a minute to avoid a collision.
dragonwriter
> Not sure I’d call crossing traffic “within a few miles” a near-miss.
Generally, from what I can find, the FAA definition is <500ft, so no, a few miles is potentially an issue, but not what would generally be categorized as a near miss unless there is some situational wrinkle that applies here.
kijin
The Air Force is probably used to flying much closer to one another, but civilians are not. Even in a busy airspace, jet airliners are usually kept apart >1000ft vertically, and much more horizontally in the direction they're moving. These birds can fly 500ft in less than 1 second after all.
https://archive.md/8dT86