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Inaviation, amid-air collision is anaccident in which two or moreaircraft come into unplanned contact duringflight and collide with each other.[1]
The potential for a mid-air collision is increased bymiscommunication, mistrust, error innavigation, deviations fromflight plans, lack ofsituational awareness, and the lack ofcollision-avoidance systems. Although a rare occurrence in general due to the vastness of open space available, collisions often happen near or atairports, where large volumes of aircraft are spaced more closely than in general flight.
The deadliest mid-air collision occured on 12 November 1996, when aBoeing 747 operated by Saudiacollided with anIlyushin IL-76 operated by Kazakhstan Airlines near Charkhi Dadri, India. The crash, in total, killed all 349 people.[2]
The first recorded collision between aircraft occurred at the "Milano Circuito Aereo Internazionale" meeting held between 24 September and 3 October 1910 inMilan, Italy. On 3 October, FrenchmanRené Thomas, flying theAntoinette IV monoplane, collided with British Army CaptainBertram Dickson by ramming hisFarman III biplane in the rear.[3] Both pilots survived, but Dickson was so badly injured that he never flew again.[4][5][6]
The first fatal collision occurred overLa 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.[7][8]
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 aircrafttransponders, alerts pilots if a potential collision with another aircraft is imminent. Despite its limitations, it is believed to have greatly reduced mid-air collisions.[9]
On some occasions, military aircraft conducting training flights inadvertently collide with civilian aircraft. The 1958 collision betweenUnited Air Lines Flight 736 and a fighter jet, and another U.S. military/civilian crash one month later involvingCapital Airlines Flight 300, hastened the signing of theFederal Aviation Act of 1958 into law. The act created the Federal Aviation Agency (later renamed theFederal Aviation Administration), 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, theAir National Guard Flight Safety Division, led by Lt Col Edward Vaughan, used thedisruptive solutions process to create a website called See and Avoid. It operated until January 2017.[10]
...the Antoinette monoplane crashed on to the biplane, both machines falling to earth a mass of broken planes and tangled wires.