A COUPLE FEET HIGHER, AND …

Submitted by Wayne Norris:

On a solo Cross Country when I was in flight training in Florida, I was head down looking at my sectional, keeping track of where I was. When I looked at the altimeter I saw that I had drifted from my cruise altitude, so as I started to pull back on the yoke. As I looked up out the windshield...ZOOM! ... a Mitsubishi MU 2 twin turboprop flashed by, only about 50 feet above me.

That was a close one!

Then, 20-some years later I was a Captain on a DC9 hauling freight. We were on an early morning flight from Ohio down to Pensacola, FL. The sun was just coming up and my first officer was in flying. It was about time to start our decent and ATC had given us discretion to 11,000 feet, so that meant the FO could start down whenever he wanted to. After a few minutes went by he started pulling the throttles back and eased the nose down with the autopilot pitch wheel.  A couple of seconds later there was a loud noise, like air rushing across the overhead panel from right to left ... I thought ‘What the hell?’ and looked up in my eyebrow window just in time to see the tail of one of our competitor’s freighter airplanes just above us – SO CLOSE I COULD SEE THE OIL STREAKS AROUND ITS RIVET HEADS!

The hair on my neck stood up as I grabbed the mic and asked ATC about that traffic. After a few minutes of silence, their response was “No one is out there.”

“Like hell!” I said. “They just passed over us less than a 100 feet East bound!  So what's up?” 

They came back after a few more minutes and said “Oh, he was a mile away and a couple thousand feet higher.”  

I replied, “Ah, no he wasn't. “

‘BS,’ I thought. I called the chief pilot when we landed and told him the story, but ATC stood by their version and that was that.

Had my FO not have started down when he did, there would have just been a small note on the news, as both aircraft were freighters and there weren't any passengers on board.