aviation Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes airplane, fixed-wing and helicopter, rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as aerostat, lighter- ...

, a mid-air collision is an accident in which two or more

aircraft An aircraft is a vehicle that is able to flight, fly by gaining support from the Atmosphere of Earth, air. It counters the force of gravity by using either Buoyancy, static lift or by using the Lift (force), dynamic lift of an airfoil, or in ...

come into unplanned contact during flight. Owing to the relatively high velocities involved and the likelihood of subsequent impact with the ground or sea, very severe damage or the total destruction of at least one of the aircraft usually results. The potential for a mid-air collision is increased by

miscommunication Miscommunication ("''mis''" + "''communication''") is defined as a social inability to communicate adequately and properly. It is one of many types of communication barriers. It is an instant where either the speaker is unable to provide the p ...

, mistrust, error in

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation ...

, deviations from

flight plan Flight plans are documents filed by a pilot or flight dispatcher with the local Air Navigation Service Provider (e.g. the FAA in the United States) prior to departure which indicate the plane's planned route or flight path. Flight plan forma ...

s, lack of

situational awareness Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status. An alternative definition is tha ...

, and the lack of collision-avoidance systems. Although a rare occurrence in general due to the vastness of open space available, collisions often happen near or at

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

s, where large volumes of aircraft are spaced more closely than in general flight.

First recorded mid-air collision

The first recorded collision between aircraft occurred at the "Milano Circuito Aereo Internazionale" meeting held between 24 September and 3 October 1910 in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city ...

, Italy. On 3 October, Frenchman René Thomas, flying the

Antoinette IV The Antoinette IV was an early French monoplane. Design and development The Antoinette IV was a high-wing aircraft with a fuselage of extremely narrow triangular cross-section and a cruciform tail. Power was provided by a V8 engine of Léon Le ...

monoplane, collided with British Army Captain

Bertram Dickson Captain Bertram Dickson RHA (21 December 1873 – 28 September 1913) was a pioneer Scottish airman and the first British serviceman to qualify as a pilot. His exploits in the air, watched by Winston Churchill and Lord Kitchener, indirect ...

by ramming his

Farman III The Farman III, also known as the Henry Farman 1909 biplane, was an early French aircraft designed and built by Henry FarmanLa Brayelle Airfield, Douai, France, on 19 June 1912. Captain Marcel Dubois and Lieutenant Albert Peignan, both of the French Army, crashed into one another in an early-morning haze, killing both pilots.

Efforts to prevent collisions

TCAS

Almost all modern large aircraft are fitted with a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS), which is designed to try to prevent mid-air collisions. The system, based on the signals from aircraft

transponders In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight tra ...

, alerts pilots if a potential collision with another aircraft is imminent. Despite its limitations, it is believed to have greatly reduced mid-air collisions.

Civilian/military mid-air collisions in the United States

On some occasions, military aircraft conducting training flights inadvertently collide with civilian aircraft. Before 1958, civilian air traffic controllers guiding civilian flights and military controllers guiding military aircraft were both unaware of the other's aircraft. The 1958 collision between United Airlines Flight 736 and a fighter jet, and another U.S. military/civilian crash one month later involving Capital Airlines Flight 300, hastened the signing of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 into law. The act created the Federal Aviation Agency (later renamed the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...

), and provided unified control of airspace for both civil and military flights. In 2005, in an effort to reduce such military/civilian mid-air collisions in U.S. airspace, the

Air National Guard The Air National Guard (ANG), also known as the Air Guard, is a federal military reserve force of the United States Air Force, as well as the air militia of each U.S. state, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the ter ...

Flight Safety Division, led by Lt Col Edward Vaughan, used the disruptive solutions process to create th
See and Avoid
web portal. In late 2006, the U.S. Defense Safety Oversight Council recognized and funded the site as its official civil/military mid-air collision prevention website, with participation by all the services.

List of notable civilian and military–civilian mid-air collisions

List of notable military mid-air collisions

References

;Notes ;Citations ;Bibliography *

External links

* – Tabular statistics and summaries of over 100 midair collisions in U.S. from 1948 to 1957
Analysis of Mid-Air Collisions
One of the most hazardous consequences of a loss of separation between aircraft, including as a result of a level bust, is a mid-air collision ''

SKYbrary SKYbrary is a wiki created by the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, International Civil Aviation Organization, and the Flight Safety Foundation to create a comprehensive source of aviation safety information freely available ...

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Indepth Backgrounder: Mid-air collision
'' CBC'' * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mid-Air Collision