A JetBlue passenger aircraft came close to colliding with a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker jet during its takeoff from Curacao on Friday.
According to AP, JetBlue Flight 1112 was taking off from Curacao to New York City’s JFK airport when the military plane crossed its flight path. U.S. military aircraft have been active in the region amid ongoing tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela – whose coastline is roughly 40 miles south of the Caribbean island nation.
Global News published a recording of the JetBlue pilot’s conversation with air traffic controllers during the incident.
“We almost had a midair collision up here,” the pilot said. “They passed directly in our flight path [and] we had to stop our climb. They are not painting, they don’t have their transponder turned on. It’s outrageous.”
A spokesperson for JetBlue told AP on Sunday that the airline had reported this incident to U.S. authorities and will participate in any investigation.
In November, the FAA issued a warning to halt flights in Venezuela due to heightened military activity in the country. That warning was soon after rebuked by Venezuela’s aviation authority, which warned airlines to resume flights or lose authorization to operate in the country.
This sounds like an air traffic control issue, not an ADSB failure. USAF aircraft in tactical environments (i.e. almost everywhere) cannot broadcast their location.
If AWACS was observing traffic, the tanker was probably alerted, verified visible contact without communicating on commercial frequencies and probably calculated separation distance for safe crossing. Whether Venezuela ATC sees the tanker on their radar as an unknown is unknown.
Begs the question. What was the KC-135 doing where it was? The USAF controllers would keep it clear of airways, unless it was actually using them. It is hard to envisage tanking operations so close to Venezuela, given the hostile environment.
Very happy the crew was heads up and visually picked up the military bird. Local controllers should have been aware of milops in order to maintain the safety if their civilian charges. As an aside, having listened to the audio version of this piece, pronunciation for Curaçao was incorrect - the “c” is pronounced softly like an S, as in the French word “garçon”, with a cédille mark under the “c”.