A Wing And A Prayer: Planes That Almost Crashed

Another Birmingham Near Miss

With such a hubbub surrounding the drone near misses, it’s interesting to jump back a few years to see that the Birmingham Airport experienced another near miss in 2011, but this time it was between a Socata TBM 850 and a Flybe-operated Q400 bound for Guernsey.

The near-miss back then was ruled to be because of a radio mix-up. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) described it as a “serious incident. Another related issue was that the tower controller had not read “recent safety notice which contained advice for dealing with this type of situation.” The incident did not result in any damage to either plane, but it must have been a scary situation.

Hollywood Director in Santa Barbara Near Miss

Sometimes, life is stranger than fiction… In 2016, Fred Toye, director ofThe Good WifeandWestwood, experienced a near-miss firsthand. He was the passenger in a United Airlines Flight5038,when it came near to colliding with a Skywest CRJ-2000.

Toye recalls, “We were about 500 above ground level … when the plane violently banked right about 45-60degrees,and out the southern facing window I saw a helicopter flash by.” The pilot turned “banked left” and then regained “center line.” When contacted and asked about the incident, Todd A. Smith (air traffic manager) said: “The helicopter pilot was told about the inbound (United flight) and advised us that he had the regional jet in sight. We are unclear why he flew that close to the arrival.”