Near miss?

cullenswood

I was flying home from holidays at the weekend and happened to be looking out the window. I then saw another jet whizz past the tail of the plane. It all happened in a matter of seconds. It seemed to just miss us.
I have seen other jets in the distance while flying before but none as unbelievably close as this.
I thought there was a minimum distance planes should be from each other, as in a couple of miles?

Su Campu

Not if they're at different levels. The minimum vertical separation is 1,000ft, which is only 328m, about two lengths of a football pitch. It's very hard to judge vertical distance from a plane, so what may have seemed at the same level was most likely 1000ft below.

Go to http://casper.frontier.nl/ and choose your date, time, and flight. See can you spot that plane, click on it and it will give its altitude.

xflyer

No it wasn't a near miss but the closing speeds are impressive which is why there are exaggerated distances for separation. What you saw is far more common than you think. I really enjoyed a long haul flight I was on over central Europe a while ago. Seeing jets shoot past at closing speeds of around a thousand miles and hour was fantastic. The thousand foot difference only seems close.

In my day job it happens all the time a thousand foot above or below seems very close, which it is when you consider how fast an airliner is travelling.