FAA, NTSB investigate near mid-air crash over SF - Yahoo! News

I've never flown with TCAS - but response to certain types of alerts are mandatory correct? It initially sounds like a fairly standard 'maintain visual separation', but then there was obviously a TCAS event as the United pilot reported.

USMCFLYR

 

What the heck does that even mean? A near collision can happen to anyone.

 

I'm guessing some facility other than SFO tower let the Cessna / Aeronca into the airspace.

 

He is a spoke's hole. Gotta spin everything to the company line. United is such an awesome, safe, safe, safe airline that other airplanes are repelled away !!!!

 

Yep, following a TCAS resolution advisory is mandatory. The UAL jet was on a IFR flight plan, so I doubt they were given "maintain visual" as standard ATC handling.

 

"Maintain Visual Separation" is absolutely used on IFR flight plans, even between two IFR aircraft, except in Class A airspace.

http://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publi...C/atc0702.html

 

I'm not watching the video again from the Yahoo homepage - but that is what I think they told the Cessna pilot to do. He called the traffic (United) in sight and they told him to 'maintain visual separation' and to pass behind the 777.

I'm not sure what the FAA's definition of a near midair is, but the Naval Safety Center does/did have one, partly due to the increase in reporting of such occurrances both overseas and in the special use airspace (one such being the R-2508). If the true distance is as ATC reported 300' vertically and 1,500' horizontally and the Cessna pilot saw the traffic - it wouldn't have met that definition.

The United flight certainly needs to know about such traffic in the area I would think and they should ask some questions, but this seems to possibly be growing some bigger/faster legs than required in my opinion now that the media has picked up on it.

USMCFLYR

 

Only if you call him in sight...

 

You are ALWAYS supposed to evade according to an RA.

Some guys will opt not to do that if they have the traffic in sight, but that is technically non-kosher because it's possible that the traffic causing the RA is not the one you actually have in sight...

 

According to the tapes I heard on AvWeb(which were pass on from liveatc.net), the single-engine had the jet in sight, not the other way around. They were supposed to pass behind the jet and continue on their way.