Near Mid-Air Collision Over Miami

You caught that comment too, did ya Philip? I snickered as well. The Argintinian pilot also was so "busy" after his "miss" that he forgot his flight number for a sec.

I chuckled when AAL431 wished the controller "Good Luck" after being passed off to departure.

I had to chuckle when AAL431 wishes the controller "Good Luck" following his hand-off.

Just because they are licensed to fly in their country, does not mean it should be automatic in US airspace ... It would seem a lesson in English may be what that crew needs. There should be some type of International version of the FAA to track the crews certfications ..

Too many of these incidents. Whats to be done?

This pilot appears have been looking at the wrong end of the runway. Helps to and at the right end :)

I'm glad the European controllers held my hand on my trip to Europe. I'll admit I said say again more times on one trip to Europe than my whole career in the states.

One of the things I dislike about Airbus is they developed their plane to allow third world countries and others to put minimally trained crews on the flight decks. This an other situations like them are mistakes made by the pilots not the aircraft. The Airbus plane is designed to keep the pilots from making certain type of mistakes that could cause loss of control. Piloting skills as to how to fly an approach course is not something the plane can correct for. Neither can the plane correct for poor language skills.

Chris...where its turned off varies with company, but normally its just the sensitivity that's adjusted. When you do this you still get traffic advisories, but may no longer receive resolution advisories.

The ARG was on tower frequency, not approach, so we don't know what heading the aircraft was issued for the intercept. The rule is 20 degrees or less when using simultaneous approaches. However, the tower controller, who is working the aircraft, may have little or no radar experience. Also, if simuls were in use, there would be a final monitor position open just for these cases, where the radar controller would cut out the tower freq when needed to give instructions. To aircraft not established on final approach course.

I have 2 impressions from the video replay.
1. To join the final, the Argentina aircraft (an ungainly A340 that probably has full flaps out and possibly even the gear down) must execute a 90° right turn onto its final approach course. This seems to be a very dangerous procedure, particularly with parallel approaches in use. Why not have them intercept the final at a 30°-40° angle, as the AA aircraft does? Even if they need to fly a few miles further out, the safety gains would be worthwhile.
2. The Argentina aircraft has already passed through the final approach path when the controller first communicates with him. Why didn't the controller say anything then? Even after the incident has been recognized, he is assigned a 90° heading. This means he will fly in close formation with the AA aircraft, even though he is 600' below his assigned altitude. Why not just let him continue northward or turn him northeast to get him out of the AA aircraft's airspace?

I am basing these questions on the video. I don't know how closely that matches what the controller saw, or how closely the audio is synced with the video. Also, there is a significant time period during which the information blocks for both aircraft are superimposed on top of each other. Even ATC simulation games can automatically reposition these blocks so that they can each be read.

What is the required vertical separation in the terminal environment?

No not dive..."descend, descend now." While at same time in other cockpit command "climb, climb now." I wonder how many billions was spent on TCAS to not even get a mention here? Wow....

No mention of TCAS, controller back patting is ok, but the TCAS should've been mentioned even if it didn't affect the outcome.

The FAA said that NMAC's have tripled in the last few years because increased reporting?!?!? BullShite!! Are they saying that controllers were not reporting all NMAC's in the past? No it's due to a shortage in controllers and that senior controllers are being force to push everyone thru the training process no matter how incompantant they are. A friend of mine was removed as a trainer in Denver because he refused to push a student thru.
With that said, it was obvious that this was pilot error here.
Just my $.02

A classic PRM scenario.

The misleading animation by CBS makes it look like 150ft separation between the two... I guess when the graphics developer first pitched his more accurate model they didn't think it was dramatic enough.

Love to know how many of those increased incidents involved foreign airlines with minimally trained pilots and lax proficiency standards.

SI SENOR.............

My favorite oftrn-used quote is, ends up "almost directly" on top. Well, is it almost, or directly?

They called that a near miss??? Looked like 1000' vertical separation to me...just another pilot who should be working in the terminal only...

"Near disaster almost occurred "
Does that mean a "far" disaster did occur? Or what exactly? Gotta love reporters!