Hey, it’s Hoover.
There is a category of accident where the pilots involved usually did nothing wrong in the way we normally mean it. Nobody scud-ran into a mountain. Nobody flew past their fuel reserve. Two aircraft were operating legally in the same block of sky, both under visual flight rules, both with a pilot whose job in that moment was to look outside and keep everybody separated, but somehow they still hit each other.
That’s the pattern I want to walk through today. The concept of see and avoid and how it can turn deadly when it fails. Let me show you how thin that margin really is.
The Pattern: Midair and near-midair
Two airplanes, legal airspace, clear conditions, and a collision anyway.
A midair happens when two aircraft occupy the same point in space at the same instant, and the entire system that was supposed to prevent it comes down to whether one pilot happened to be looking at the right piece of windscreen at the right moment. When you’re cruising around or flying in a practice area, on a clear day, the airplane you never saw is the one that gets you.
From NTSB final reports, 2008–present:
109 midair collisions 57 of them killed someone — 52.3% 132 people died 24 aircraft destroyed
This is a small pattern by count, but small doesn’t mean rare in consequence. When two airplanes meet, the outcome is almost never a bent wingtip and a story at the FBO. Now let me show you what one of these 21 tragedies looked like.
One real flight
September 17, 2022. Cessna 172S. Instructional flight to a practice area north of a home airport in Longmont, Colorado.
A flight instructor and a student pilot took off and proceeded north to a practice area to work maneuvers. It was a clear day and ideal conditions for an instructor to teach a student. They climbed to somewhere between 7,000 and 7,500 feet MSL and set up to work.
About five minutes earlier, and from a different airport to the east, a Sonex departed and turned westbound. It climbed into the same block, 7,000 to 7,500 feet, and tracked toward the same piece of sky. Two airplanes, two separate airports, no reason for either to know the other existed except with their own eyes and whatever traffic display each cockpit carried.
Here’s the part that matters. The Cessna was equipped with ADS-B in and out, and it was transmitting throughout the flight. The Sonex wasn’t transmitting. Its GPS and transponder were examined afterward and found configured not to broadcast position via ADS-B. The last time the Sonex had put out ADS-B data was July 14, 2022, which was more than two months before this flight. So the Cessna was announcing itself to the world, and the airplane converging on it was electronically silent. Whether the Cessna’s own traffic display would have shown the Sonex is something investigators could not determine, because they couldn’t establish the exact configuration of the Cessna’s cockpit displays.
When the Cessna reached the practice area, it made a left 360-degree turn. That was a clearing turn, and according to the flight school it was standard procedure. Look before you work. On completing the turn, the Cessna rolled out and proceeded eastbound. The Sonex was approaching that same area from the east, tracking west-northwest, straight into the Cessna’s vicinity.
The flight track data showed the two airplanes come together at about 6,939 feet MSL. Both tracks then showed a rapid descent. Fragmented sections of the outboard left wing of each airplane were found in a field directly below the point where the two tracks merged. Both airplanes came down in fields about 2,400 feet apart, and both were destroyed on impact.
Three people died.
Now think about the geometry, because the NTSB did. The sun was in the east, at a bearing of 108 degrees, about 24 degrees above the horizon. A visibility study reconstructed what each pilot could have seen in the final minute. Over the 60 seconds before the collision, each airplane would have crossed the other’s windscreen, one moving right to left, the other left to right. But the study also found that the instrument panel, the canopy frame, the compass, and sun glare would each have obscured the view. The traffic was there to be seen, in the physical sense, and it was also sitting behind a windscreen post, or washed out by low morning sun, at the exact moment it mattered.
The post-accident examinations found no pre-accident failures or malfunctions on either airplane that would have prevented normal operation.
The pilots’ inability to see and avoid each other, resulting in a midair collision. (NTSB CEN22FA424)
This wasn’t a system failure or a reckless mistake. This was simply the inability to see and avoid. Two working airplanes, a clear day, a clearing turn that was flown by the book, and the human eye still lost.
The Decision Gates
This pattern is uncomfortable because the exits aren’t obvious the way they are in a weather accident. But there were points here where the odds could have shifted, and every one of them belongs to you on your next flight.
Gate 1: The Cessna transmitted ADS-B out; the Sonex did not. The pilot of a non-transmitting airplane can’t be seen by traffic systems, and can’t assume anyone else knows where he is.
The check: Is your ADS-B out actually transmitting today, or do you assume it is? When did you last confirm it, not just power it on?
Gate 2: The Cessna flew a proper clearing turn before starting work, and the traffic still arrived from a direction and at a moment the turn didn’t cover. A clearing turn clears the sky at the instant you fly it, in the arc your eyes sweep. It doesn’t clear the airplane converging from behind the canopy frame thirty seconds later.
The check: When you finish a clearing turn, do you treat the airspace as cleared, or do you keep scanning as if the next airplane is already inbound?
Gate 3: Both airplanes were legally in a shared practice area, converging, with the low morning sun and airframe structure hiding each from the other. Known practice areas concentrate traffic doing exactly what you are doing, at your altitudes, often silent.
The check: Before you enter a practice area, do you know who else uses it, what frequency they announce on, and which direction the sun will hide traffic from you today?
Here are a few things I want you to think about.
A clearing turn clears the sky for the second you fly it. The airplane that gets you is the one behind the doorpost, or the one washed out by a low sun you flew straight into.
Electronic traffic only shows you what is transmitting. Confirm your own ADS-B out is actually broadcasting, and never assume the airplane converging on you is doing the same.
Before you launch into a practice area, know who else lives there and where today’s sun will hide them.
Section 5: More patterns like this one
If you want to dig into more midair-near-midair cases from the archive:
Have you ever had a genuine near-midair? What were you doing in the cockpit in the seconds before you spotted it, and what changed in how you scan afterward?
Your response will always be kept confidential, and every reply gets read.