Pilot narrowly avoids 'midair collision' with US Air Force plane near Venezuela

JetBlue pilot calls incident ‘outrageous’ and says US military refueling tanker didn’t have transponder turned on

"Outrageous" is an understatement. Why does it always seem like military aircraft get a free-pass to break FAA regulations, communicate with no one when in shared airspace, and endanger the lives of everyone in civilian aircraft without any repercussions? This isn't the first time something like this has happened, and it doesn't always end in a near-miss.

If we're going to have an unannounced war we should at least file NOTAMs.

An aerial refueler flying so close to Venezuela [1] can't have been there with the best intentions. I don't think that they're too keen on advertising their presence or whereabouts.

I know that some here absolutely hate any suggestions that the US military is capable of any evil. But you're getting very sanitized news. Even otherwise, they have already murdered 80+ Venezuelan civilians in international waters and we don't even know if they were actually guilty of drug trafficking, since those were extra-judicial executions. And at least two of them were murdered in a double tap attack, which is an international war crime, regardless.

[1] It was Curaçao to be precise, but it's still oddly close to Venezuela.

Maybe I am thinking about this the wrong way so please correct me if I am wrong.

1. The civilian planes fly on pre published routes and communicate with air traffic controllers in plain text

1. Any covert military operation has access to these plans

1. I understand that there may be reasons why military planes might want to fly undetected but given they know where the civilian planes are and where they are flying, it should be trivial for the military ships and planes to avoid those areas.