Optical Illusion - you decide! - Looks like two passenger jets about to collide

[episodic]

http://www.sky.com/skynews/picture_gall...ure_gallery/0,,70141-1210748-1,00.html

Go through the whole slide show (6 photos) - what is your opinion? Near miss or optical illusion as reported?

 

[notfred]

You can't tell the vertical distance between them from those photos at all.

 

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

I'm going with optical illusion.

Since the FAA has required all Part 121 operators (DHL and Singapore are both Part 121) to fly only aircraft equipped with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems) since Jan 1, 2005, we can conclude that both these aircraft have TCAS installed. I find it highly unlikely that BOTH aircraft had TCAS units which failed to pick up the conflicting traffic, and I also find it highly unlikely that the DHL crew failed to notice the JAL 777 if it were, in fact, that close. This all equals one impossibly impossible coincidence if it is, in fact, a near miss.

 

[chambersc]

Originally posted by: giantpinkbunnyhead
I'm going with optical illusion.

Since the FAA has required all Part 121 operators (DHL and Singapore are both Part 121) to fly only aircraft equipped with TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems) since Jan 1, 2005, we can conclude that both these aircraft have TCAS installed. I find it highly unlikely that BOTH aircraft had TCAS units which failed to pick up the conflicting traffic, and I also find it highly unlikely that the DHL crew failed to notice the JAL 777 if it were, in fact, that close. This all equals one impossibly impossible coincidence if it is, in fact, a near miss.

yeah, looks like optical illusion.

 

[desteffy]

optical illusion, you cant have depth perception at that distance in clear skies.

 

[Triumph]

I think that one jet was sniffing the other jet's ass. It's commonly how jets greet each other when crossing paths in the air.

 

[Nutdotnet]

Originally posted by: Triumph
I think that one jet was sniffing the other jet's ass. It's commonly how jets greet each other when crossing paths in the air.

Haha. WORD!

 

[BigPoppa]

Stop saying "near miss" for christ sake. A near miss implies that you nearly missed, which leads to the only other possiblity: COLLIDING.

 

[Omegachi]

OMG, thats so fake. you can see it if you look closely at the overlap

 

[Omegachi]

besides, air traffic controls will not allow this to happen.

have you ever heard of two commercial planes ever colliding like this in aviation history ever?

 

[JoPh]

neat

 

[SparkyJJO]

optical illusion but still looks like a close call

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: BigPoppa
Stop saying "near miss" for christ sake. A near miss implies that you nearly missed, which leads to the only other possiblity: COLLIDING.

I loved that excerpt that George Carlin did regarding this very fact. :laugh:

 

[Vic]

An Airbus A300 is 176 feet long with a wingspan of 147 feet. A Boeing 777 is 242 feet long with a wingspan of 200 feet.

If not a near-miss, they were certainly very close to that 1000 foot vertical limit.


edit: dimensions courtesy of airlines.net

 

[Epic Fail]

the smaller plane in the image is closer than the bigger plane, how much smaller is the plane if they maintained a distance of 1000ft

 

[marvdmartian]

I checked the websites for Boeing and Airbus, and found out that the 777 is 200'W x 209'L, and the A300 is 147'W x 177'L. That doesn't sound like a huge difference in size, until you consider that if you drew a box around each aircraft, the box around the Boeing 777 would be 1.6x the size of the box around the Airbus A300. Yet those aircraft don't look to be that far apart in relative size in those pics, they seem to be within ~10% size of each other.

That lack of relative size difference, to me, explains a lot about how far apart they are. At least, that sounds good to me!!

Edit: I finished typing this, hit the button to post, then noticed that vic was faster than me! :roll: Oh well, next time!

 

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by: Omegachi
besides, air traffic controls will not allow this to happen.

have you ever heard of two commercial planes ever colliding like this in aviation history ever?

1. they didn't collide.

2. systems fail. several months ago in southern california there was a total communications failure with ATC that resulted in several incidents where separation was not maintained.

3. atc isn't perfect. they have been known to inadvertently vector aircraft into the sides of mountains.

 

[shimsham]

Originally posted by: yamadakun
the smaller plane in the image is closer than the bigger plane, how much smaller is the plane if they maintained a distance of 1000ft

my thoughts

 

[giantpinkbunnyhead]

Originally posted by: Omegachi
besides, air traffic controls will not allow this to happen.

have you ever heard of two commercial planes ever colliding like this in aviation history ever?

ATC cannot be perfect, and they do make mistakes. They have made fatal mistakes.

As to your question, it's happened on several occasions. The worst midair crash in history involved two 747's colliding in the skies over India, killing well over 300 people in 1996.

Another related accident, and far more infamous, is the tragic collision at Tenerife, Canary Islands in 1977 where a 747 on its takeoff roll collided with another 747 sitting on the runway. 583 people were killed, and it was the worst accident in all of aviation history.

 

[cavemanmoron]

Originally posted by: Omegachi
besides, air traffic controls will not allow this to happen.

have you ever heard of two commercial planes ever colliding like this in aviation history ever?

yes
http://www.airsafe.com/events/midair.htm

16 December 1960, United Air Lines DC8 and Lockheed Constellation, New York, NY: The two aircraft collided over New York with the Constellation crashing in Staten Island and the DC8 crashing in Brooklyn. All seven crew members and 76 passengers on the DC8 were killed. All 50 occupants of the Constellation were also killed.

10 September 1976; Inex Adria DC9-32; Near Zagreb, Yugoslavia: The aircraft had a midair collision with a British Airways Trident 3B. All five crew members and 108 passengers on the DC9 were killed. All nine crew members and 54 passengers on the Trident were also killed as was one person on the ground.


1 July 2002; Bashkirian Airlines Tu154; near Ueberlingen, Germany: The aircraft was involved in a midair collision involving a DHL 757 while both aircraft were flying at about 36,000 feet (about 11,000 meters). Debris from both aircraft fell in an area near Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border. Both crew members on the DHL 757 and the 57 passengers and 12 crew members on the Tu154 were killed. The 57 passengers on the Tu154 included 44 children. The 757 departed Bahrain and was continuing on to Brussels after a stop in Bergamo in northern Italy. The Tu154 was on a trip from Moscow to Barcelona and had made a stopover in Munich shortly before the accident.

 

[myusername]

Originally posted by: marvdmartian
I checked the websites for Boeing and Airbus, and found out that the 777 is 200'W x 209'L, and the A300 is 147'W x 177'L. That doesn't sound like a huge difference in size, until you consider that if you drew a box around each aircraft, the box around the Boeing 777 would be 1.6x the size of the box around the Airbus A300. Yet those aircraft don't look to be that far apart in relative size in those pics, they seem to be within ~10% size of each other.

That lack of relative size difference, to me, explains a lot about how far apart they are. At least, that sounds good to me!!

Edit: I finished typing this, hit the button to post, then noticed that vic was faster than me! :roll: Oh well, next time!

In the photographs, the ratio of the larger plane to the smaller is 1.4 The ratio of the actual dimensions is 1.375 Any compression caused by a telephoto lens would reduce this ratio...

 

[arcas]

I'm too lazy to do the math tonight but can one not use the law of cosines to estimate the distance to each plane? The difficulty is that the planes are likely not perpindicular to the viewer (the DHL plane clearly isn't) so the first step would be to estimate those angles. Should be doable since each plane is symmetrical and their dimensions are known quantities. From there, it should be possible to estimate each plane's distance from the photographer.

Edit: Ah. I neglected to take into account distortions created by the camera's lense. Okay. So maybe there isn't enough info available to solve this problem