Is 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 that's what happened. And this is a very common mistake.
A bit simplified, but what happens is that each flight is assigned a departure procedure during startup. That procedure is runway specific and designed to keep traffic clear of other runways so they can have traffic departing from multiple runways at the same time.
Imagine a runway on the left and one on the right, the left runway departure procedures would have an early left turn and the right runway departure procedures would be straight ahead until some altitude and then a right turn.
Now if you depart from the right runway but accidentally select the departure procedure for the left runway, the instruments (and autopilot) would indicate a left turn at about 500ft, right into the path of traffic from the left runway.
This mistake is common when for example a plane is first assigned the left runway and then during taxi changes to the right runway. Or the preflight paperwork includes the left runway departure procedure, but the actual assignment from ATC is the right runway (this was a source of incidents in Amsterdam for a while with some airlines)
This is exactly why the takeoff clearances say “RNAV xxx, cleared for takeoff”. It’s a last confirmation, right before takeoff, of which departure procedure to use.
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.
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.)
Is this significantly different from the near mid-air collisions that happen on a regular basis?
The audio does an excellent job of showing a layperson how difficult it is to interpret and who's going wear based on sound, and then I had to go back through the video to see the turn.
These people aren't being paid to do this right now? Is that right? I'm not American, but that's what I've heard.
Yeah. It's a super stressful job that doesn't pay well normally and now these people are having to drive Uber on the side to pay their mortgages and put food on the table. I'm definitely not flying until this is sorted out.
No, TCAS alerts are inhibited at low altitude. It goes in steps by altitude (above ground) from no alerts at all, to only traffic warning but no resolutions, to resolution but no descends, to normal full operation.
Yes, TCAS II warns all the way down to 100m AGL (around 320ft above the ground), and they were already between 1000ft and 1500ft (~400m).
It may or may not have advised what to do (to climb/descent/etc.) because that is turned off below 1000ft, and they were approximately at that altitude at the time.
ITY621 does a readback: "...climb DLREY," meaning they confirmed the departure path for 24L extends forward before heading left; which is different for 25R, which heads left shortly after takeoff: "...RNAV DOCKR."
Kind 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.
I want you to very carefully consider the better options.
Perhaps they type instructions? And hope someone reads them?
Perhaps they drag and drop vectors? Then what, a radial menu with emergency modal screens?
Or maybe they click some buttons, forcing the occasional look away from the screen?
Maybe AI could do it all?
For this, voice is perfect. We have been following instructions by voice since humans could grunt. We do not require anyone to look away from the screen (ATC) or look down from the window outside (pilot) for any reason.
We do not require rebroadcast because everyone can hear and take initiative if required.
By what interface, specifically, should someone required to fly an airplane interact with ATC while flying that airplane? By what interface should someone who needs to see where everyone is all the time be able to contact that pilot that cannot look away from the world outside ever and cannot use their hands for anything but flying at a critical time?
As a commercial pilot, your response is a little glib and kind of ignores the meaningful advances that have been made with D-ATIS, ADS-B In, CPDLC, DUATS, XM weather, etc. Voice is absolutely not perfect, analog FM audio often comes through garbled, pilots have to wait their turn on a busy single-user channel for timely information, etc.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the complexities that will come from full integration of drones and eVTOL into the national airspace, which will absolutely swamp a one-speaker-at-a-time analog FM comms system.
> I want you to very carefully consider the better options.
How about digital HD audio at least? In parallel with legacy analog audio.
The next step is visual alerts for pilots if the ATC tries to call _them_. You know, like our phones can do for nearly 150 years.
Edit: I'm studying for a private pilot license, and the difficulties in just understanding what the ATC and the other pilots are talking about is really a major stumbling block for me.
You make a strong case for voice, but that doesn’t necessarily invalidate their argument, they never said voice should be replaced.
Here’s some ideas:
1. A data side channel
2. Use it to send originator for each message, have unique note on other end per sender so they don’t need to check visually, but also show on their display so corrupted or suspicious sender can be verified, in desperate circumstances (rather than the current case of “that cannot be done at all”).
3. Digital audio, allowing actual high quality audio, which we know does improve comprehension, which should not be optional in this context.
4. Take some lessons from modern coms systems on how to handle overlapping coms, plus the extra bandwidth from digital, so overlapping coms is handled gracefully (I realise the realtime nature prevents being too clever, but perhaps blocking all but the first to speak and playing a tone if you’re being blocked), perhaps with some sensible overrides like atc and anyone declaring an emergency getting priority. Currently overlap obliterates both messages and it’s possible for senders to not even know their message was lost. This has contributed to accidents, whilst basic direct radio transmissions cannot avoid this, smart algorithms with some networking could definitely reduce the failure cases to very rare and extreme scenarios
5. Let atc interact with flight planners on aircraft, show the aircraft’s actual locally programmed flight plan to atc, with clear icons if it differs from the filed plan atc has, and perhaps as an emergency only measure, allow atc to submit a flight plan to the aircraft (not replacing the active plan of course, just as a suggestion/support for struggling pilots, “since you have not understood my instructions 3 times, please review the submitted plan on your flight computer, note how it differs from what you programmed”)
6. Aircraft usually know where they are, and which atc they’re meant to be communicating with, have the data channels talk even when the audio channel is not set correctly. If incompetent pilots forget to switch channel, you can force an alarm instead of launching a fighter jet, or just have a button for “connect to correct atc” and a red light when you’re not on the correct one.
That’s just the ideas I’ve come up with just now. 4. Is probably quite hard to get right, and 5 could add load, so should be done carefully.
But hard to believe the current system is technically optimal, or even vaguely close to optimal.
Admittedly, I know the real reason is that having 1 working system for everyone is better than a theoretically great system that is barely implemented and a complicated mess of handoffs between the 2. But with care they can absolutely improve things, but feels like things are moving a few decades slower than they should be.
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.
Yup. Audio is sourced from volunteers with home radios & antennas. Quality will be dependant on how far the nearest one was from LAX and their personal setup. Not necessarily representative of quality that the controller/pilot was hearing.
Right? Just in a car, we know that talking to someone in the car itself has adverse effects on situational awareness, and talking to someone on a phone is much worse than that. But even after all the research and training that goes into human factors in aviation ... we can't do better than confusing, poor quality, AM band party lines during critical phases of flight?
Keep in mind that the person talking and listening to the radio is not the pilot flying the airplane. Pilot and Copilot alternate which job they are doing. It's not the same as the driver of a car talking on a phone.
CPDLC is text messaging between controllers and pilots. It is widely used amongst most carriers. It does not work for time critical situations. Voice and radio is the only solution that will work when you don't have time to type a message.
Talking to someone on the phone who has a birds eye view of the road, other drivers, and the map, and only addresses you to help you drive? in no way possible reduces your situational awareness. I refuse to believe that.
Now idle chatting with coworker Wendy about dinner will take you out of that situation and make you more dangerous.
as the video says at the beginning, the audio is sourced from LiveATC, which is a network of volunteers with their own radio equipment [0] who tune in to ATC frequencies and then livestream them.
those volunteers are by necessity not at the airport itself, but some distance away. and the audio is compressed to 16kbps MP3 for livestreaming purposes.
this means the sound quality we're hearing is going to be worse (significantly worse, in some cases) than what the pilots and controllers actually hear.
> They're sending instructions by voice.
I get that it's 2025 and it's tempting to say "everything should be a text message". but remember that there's 2 pilots in the aircraft, the Pilot Flying and the Pilot Monitoring [1].
under normal circumstances, the PM handles talking to ATC (among other duties). but both pilots have headsets that allow them to hear transmissions from ATC. and crucially for the Pilot Flying, they hear those messages without taking their eyes away from actually flying.
modern aircraft do have a text message system of sorts [2] but there is a very good reason why the crucial ATC instruction in this case ("turn right heading 270 immediately") happens via voice and not an ACARS message.
also, it's important to remember that airline pilots in the US have a minimum of 1500 hours of flying time, and pilots flying an A330 on an LAX-Rome route probably have significantly more than that. we're watching a 5-minute video and going "oh it's a bit hard for me to follow this" but for actual commercial pilots this radio chatter is routine and something they have been practicing for years.
There seems to be a lack of imagination in a lot of these replies. Everyone is thinking that the only alternative to voice directions only is text messages? You only need to look at satnav to see one obvious alternative.
It has to do with how ATC needs to be able to communicate with all planes in the air, even ones built 100 years ago. They have to use radio so everyone can hear everyone else. There’s no other technology that is as ubiquitous as radio, so they have to work with what they’ve got. Upgrading to other stuff would be an absolute nightmare, though they are making progress on less critical fronts.
Couldn't comms broadcast in multiple parallel modes, like cell phone traffic?: More clear (probably digital) transmissions in on band, and for backward compatibility, old radio transmissions in another.
I think one of the best things they could add would be an electronic drawing tablet for ATC to draw a flight path on a map and pipe it directly into the pilots EFIS or HUD. It's not fool-proof, but in high density airspace, it seems more efficient to be able to draw a curve and press a button than try to verbally describe it. Of course one major pitfall is you cannot draw in 3D.
Like with all voice communications, context is important. There are only a limited number of things normally said and most transmissions are about things that were decided before the flight. Everyone involved is used to the bandwidth limited audio used here. Non-pilots have none of this context and normally have a hard time understanding these transmissions.
For ATC environments the voice data is a series of pre-expected prompts. You could do something different but you would pretty much have to redesign the whole system from scratch without making things significantly more complex. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.
Other than voice how would you send instructions that don't really on changing your focus? I can listen while doing other things. What else would you do?
Primitive but has been working well enough for decades is so much better than the prospect of Accenture coming in with their absolutely incompetent bullshit.
I was watching KBOS https://www.flightaware.com/live/airport/KBOS on Thursday morning and saw a couple of Cape Air flights that looked like they were within 500 feet of each other. I suspect we'll be hearing more of these stories soon.
I'm listening to ATC for education. I'm not confident in my ability to understand it correctly. That's why I qualified my level of certainty.
FWIW, the KBOS incident I saw didn't seem to be ATC either, if it was actually what I thought it was. It does seem like either of them may have been caught earlier if there had been more ATCs on staff or if they weren't as stressed or sleep deprived.
Readit News
A bit simplified, but what happens is that each flight is assigned a departure procedure during startup. That procedure is runway specific and designed to keep traffic clear of other runways so they can have traffic departing from multiple runways at the same time.
Imagine a runway on the left and one on the right, the left runway departure procedures would have an early left turn and the right runway departure procedures would be straight ahead until some altitude and then a right turn.
Now if you depart from the right runway but accidentally select the departure procedure for the left runway, the instruments (and autopilot) would indicate a left turn at about 500ft, right into the path of traffic from the left runway.
This mistake is common when for example a plane is first assigned the left runway and then during taxi changes to the right runway. Or the preflight paperwork includes the left runway departure procedure, but the actual assignment from ATC is the right runway (this was a source of incidents in Amsterdam for a while with some airlines)
If you're really interested, read this incident report via Google Translate, it describes exactly how this type of incident happens: https://www.lvnl.nl/voorvallen/20220415-verlies-van-afstand-...
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.)
The audio does an excellent job of showing a layperson how difficult it is to interpret and who's going wear based on sound, and then I had to go back through the video to see the turn.
These people aren't being paid to do this right now? Is that right? I'm not American, but that's what I've heard.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/travel/shutdown-air-traff....
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/shutdown-air-....
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/28/air-traffic-...
It may or may not have advised what to do (to climb/descent/etc.) because that is turned off below 1000ft, and they were approximately at that altitude at the time.
There's got to be a better solution surely?
Perhaps they type instructions? And hope someone reads them?
Perhaps they drag and drop vectors? Then what, a radial menu with emergency modal screens?
Or maybe they click some buttons, forcing the occasional look away from the screen?
Maybe AI could do it all?
For this, voice is perfect. We have been following instructions by voice since humans could grunt. We do not require anyone to look away from the screen (ATC) or look down from the window outside (pilot) for any reason.
We do not require rebroadcast because everyone can hear and take initiative if required.
By what interface, specifically, should someone required to fly an airplane interact with ATC while flying that airplane? By what interface should someone who needs to see where everyone is all the time be able to contact that pilot that cannot look away from the world outside ever and cannot use their hands for anything but flying at a critical time?
Chesterton's ATC.
This doesn't even begin to touch on the complexities that will come from full integration of drones and eVTOL into the national airspace, which will absolutely swamp a one-speaker-at-a-time analog FM comms system.
How about digital HD audio at least? In parallel with legacy analog audio.
The next step is visual alerts for pilots if the ATC tries to call _them_. You know, like our phones can do for nearly 150 years.
Edit: I'm studying for a private pilot license, and the difficulties in just understanding what the ATC and the other pilots are talking about is really a major stumbling block for me.
Here’s some ideas: 1. A data side channel 2. Use it to send originator for each message, have unique note on other end per sender so they don’t need to check visually, but also show on their display so corrupted or suspicious sender can be verified, in desperate circumstances (rather than the current case of “that cannot be done at all”). 3. Digital audio, allowing actual high quality audio, which we know does improve comprehension, which should not be optional in this context. 4. Take some lessons from modern coms systems on how to handle overlapping coms, plus the extra bandwidth from digital, so overlapping coms is handled gracefully (I realise the realtime nature prevents being too clever, but perhaps blocking all but the first to speak and playing a tone if you’re being blocked), perhaps with some sensible overrides like atc and anyone declaring an emergency getting priority. Currently overlap obliterates both messages and it’s possible for senders to not even know their message was lost. This has contributed to accidents, whilst basic direct radio transmissions cannot avoid this, smart algorithms with some networking could definitely reduce the failure cases to very rare and extreme scenarios 5. Let atc interact with flight planners on aircraft, show the aircraft’s actual locally programmed flight plan to atc, with clear icons if it differs from the filed plan atc has, and perhaps as an emergency only measure, allow atc to submit a flight plan to the aircraft (not replacing the active plan of course, just as a suggestion/support for struggling pilots, “since you have not understood my instructions 3 times, please review the submitted plan on your flight computer, note how it differs from what you programmed”) 6. Aircraft usually know where they are, and which atc they’re meant to be communicating with, have the data channels talk even when the audio channel is not set correctly. If incompetent pilots forget to switch channel, you can force an alarm instead of launching a fighter jet, or just have a button for “connect to correct atc” and a red light when you’re not on the correct one.
That’s just the ideas I’ve come up with just now. 4. Is probably quite hard to get right, and 5 could add load, so should be done carefully. But hard to believe the current system is technically optimal, or even vaguely close to optimal.
Admittedly, I know the real reason is that having 1 working system for everyone is better than a theoretically great system that is barely implemented and a complicated mess of handoffs between the 2. But with care they can absolutely improve things, but feels like things are moving a few decades slower than they should be.
If you want to listen in yourself.
Now idle chatting with coworker Wendy about dinner will take you out of that situation and make you more dangerous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Dependent_Surveillan...
as the video says at the beginning, the audio is sourced from LiveATC, which is a network of volunteers with their own radio equipment [0] who tune in to ATC frequencies and then livestream them.
those volunteers are by necessity not at the airport itself, but some distance away. and the audio is compressed to 16kbps MP3 for livestreaming purposes.
this means the sound quality we're hearing is going to be worse (significantly worse, in some cases) than what the pilots and controllers actually hear.
> They're sending instructions by voice.
I get that it's 2025 and it's tempting to say "everything should be a text message". but remember that there's 2 pilots in the aircraft, the Pilot Flying and the Pilot Monitoring [1].
under normal circumstances, the PM handles talking to ATC (among other duties). but both pilots have headsets that allow them to hear transmissions from ATC. and crucially for the Pilot Flying, they hear those messages without taking their eyes away from actually flying.
modern aircraft do have a text message system of sorts [2] but there is a very good reason why the crucial ATC instruction in this case ("turn right heading 270 immediately") happens via voice and not an ACARS message.
also, it's important to remember that airline pilots in the US have a minimum of 1500 hours of flying time, and pilots flying an A330 on an LAX-Rome route probably have significantly more than that. we're watching a 5-minute video and going "oh it's a bit hard for me to follow this" but for actual commercial pilots this radio chatter is routine and something they have been practicing for years.
0: https://www.liveatc.net/faq/
1: https://skybrary.aero/articles/pilot-flying-pf-and-pilot-mon...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACARS
For ATC environments the voice data is a series of pre-expected prompts. You could do something different but you would pretty much have to redesign the whole system from scratch without making things significantly more complex. Complexity is the enemy of reliability.
Aircraft have much better quality electronics than a $20 tabletop radio located some distance away by whoever is ripping the stream.
This is a field where they need more .9999s than Amazon.
FWIW, the KBOS incident I saw didn't seem to be ATC either, if it was actually what I thought it was. It does seem like either of them may have been caught earlier if there had been more ATCs on staff or if they weren't as stressed or sleep deprived.
Deleted Comment
ITA plane taking off around 1:08:15. The camera doesn't follow it but you might be able to hear someone yelling wtf around 1:08:58.