Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
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Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#2This happened on 10/31/25 https://avherald.com/h?article=52f72b6c&opt=0
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#3[flagged]
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#4Is 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?
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#5Is 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?
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.
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#6Is 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?
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 b…
Edit: They were handed off to departures before tower’s traffic warning. The near-collision occurred in the middle of tower-departures handoff. Tower was warning them of traffic in hopes they were still on the frequency but they probably weren’t, and they noticed traffic just before they contacted departures.
On ATC side, maybe departures could have been more proactive and warn AA of traffic together with tower. On AA side, maybe they could have been listening to tower for a while as they are tuning in to departures (there were 10–20 seconds where AA was not listening to tower anymore and did not come in on departures yet). Seems hard to blame either of them in particular.
Original comment as is:
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.)
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#7Kind 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?
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#8Kind 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?
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.
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#9Kind 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?
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.
Unintelligible audio is a failure mode.
Re: Near mid-air collision at LAX between American Airlines and ITA [video]
#10Kind 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?
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.