Originally published at: JetBlue has near miss with US Air Force jet outside Venezuela
Pilot notifies air traffic controllers about ‘outrageous’ close call.
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”.
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