ANOTHER FAA *FAILURE* | Southwest Plane PLUNGES | Near Miss

Shortly after the Southwest flight took

off from Burbank Airport yesterday

afternoon, terrifying passengers,

including Fox News digital reporter

Tracy Wright and her good friend Caitlyn

Birdie.

>> 10 minutes because we had just started

talking about like what are we going to

do this weekend? It turned into a real

nightmare real quick. We plummeted and

there was no warning at all and it was

just a freef fall for what felt like 5

to 10 seconds.

Two flight attendants were treated for

injuries after the plane quickly

plummeted. The FAA released a statement

on this incident, saying, quote, "South

Airlines Flight 1496 responded to an

onboard alert that another aircraft was

in the vicinity while in Los Angeles Air

Route Traffic Control Center airspace."

Bird's mother was on the plane, too.

They huddled together when it quickly

descended as other passengers cried out,

fearing for their lives.

There was a baby on board and the baby

was screaming. U people going, "Oh my

god." Um, a lot of nose. Um, and then a

woman screaming, "I I need to I want to

get off. I want to get off." Um, so

everyone experienced some trauma within

the

>> All right. So, as a jet pilot, this is

actually a very scary thing for

passengers, but it's actually extremely

safe that the resolution advisory system

worked because this aircraft was

actually a military aircraft, but

privatelyowned.

Now, this creates some interesting

pluses and minuses. Very frequently,

military aircraft fly with their

transponders off. If your transponders

are off, it means pilots can't get any

kind of resolution advisory to climb or

to descend. This is really important

because when you're flying as a pilot,

you are always aware of traffic around

you. But in the worst case scenario,

traffic gets close to you. The TCAST

system will work in your plane in

conjunction with other planes to provide

what are called RAS or resolution

advisories. These start with just simple

notifications that flash yellow flashing

lights that say traffic.

Uh and you'll look and see, okay, where

is the traffic? Do I have eyes on the

traffic? What's going on? These can then

advance to basically a resolution

advisory which is you where you start

getting notifications displaying like

hey you need to be prepared to take

evasive action and after you're prepared

to take evasive action the computer will

actually automatically tell you to

descend or to climb. Now this is by

design. It tells each aircraft what to

do. Now, there's a very important

difference here about this privately

used or flown military aircraft and a an

actual military aircraft because this

may not have turned out as well had this

actually been a military aircraft. Let's

listen though for a moment what these

alerts sound like so you could see what

a traffic advisory or resolution

advisory sounds like.

Traffic 12:00 5 m hour level.

>> Climb. Climb.

>> Flight directors off. Increase climb.

Increase climb.

>> Those are resolution advised 9 alley

tass.

>> Traffic is 2 and 12

>> here. You could see traffic uh yeah as

they're saying 2 and 1/2 miles out 800

ft below now. So traffic coming straight

at you and the resolution advisory is

climb increase climb. So they're at

12,700 ft in this case.

>> 12:00 700 below.

>> Clear of conflict.

>> Clear of conflict is a way of saying,

"Hey, you're good. You're over 1,000 ft

away. Uh it doesn't look like your

trajectories are going to converge at

any point. This is this is a good thing,

right?" Uh here's another that was a

simulator. Here's a sort of real life

example of what it might look like. Uh

although I'm actually I'm not sure if

this is real life or this is also a

simulator, but it it it's a little bit

more clear with the instrumentation up

close.

>> Looking out to see if we can see the

traffic. We can't see anything yet.

There it is. I've just seen live

>> traffic

>> same. And get ready if we need to do any

corrective action.

air.

>> Yeah. See these bars right here? I have

had these bars come up myself as a jet

pilot. Uh now those will actually come

up before it commands you to climb or to

descend because it's giving you a heads

up like I'm about to move you. Get

ready. Uh and so I've actually had this

with uh a Delta flight myself before.

I've never gotten an advisory, but we

were close enough to where we had the

red bars. And this is with air traffic

control separating us. We're all on

you're you're on a mandatory flight plan

when you're above 18,000 ft. You're in

class A airspace. Everything is air

traffic control.

>> The autopilot has disengaged and Jason

descending. Keeping outside.

>> Climb now.

>> That's a reversal.

>> Climb now.

>> Climb now.

It's a reversal. So, we've got to climb.

There's the traffic.

>> So, you notice in this example, the

aircraft actually descended about 500 ft

rapidly. You're disconnecting the

autopilot. You're throwing the plane

over. This feels extremely uncomfortable

for passengers, but it's it's the safe

thing to do. And even though people

have, you know, videos of, hey, like

that was really scary. Oh my gosh, I

thought we were going down or whatever.

Uh, the more I fly, the more I realize

that evasive actions from pilots are by

design safe. Like, not doing the evasive

action is a scary thing. So, here I I

always like showing this video because

this is just an example where I'm

purposefully stalling the aircraft. Uh,

you can see I've got a jet here at 6,500

ft at 101 knots. You could see my

speedometer right here is showing 101

knots flashing in red. And that's

because we're about to stall. Uh, and so

you'll see me break the stall by watch

the horizon bar here. Break the water.

We're doing these stalls off the beach

uh off of uh Santa Barbara here.

>> Stall. Stall.

>> Stall. Stall.

>> There it is.

>> Power.

>> Stall. Stall.

>> That's our hydraulic pusher that's

actually pushing us over. uh to to you

know prevent a complete stall uh and it

just simulates a stall recovery. But the

hydraulic pusher will actually push you

forward to force your nose over so you

can capture that air speed again. Uh but

again these these evasive actions

critical when it comes to flying. But so

it turns out that this hawker was

actually privately registered. Now why

does it matter that this was privately

registered? Uh well because it means

that it did have the opportunity to

provide transponder data tast

whatever ADSB out uses you know

transponder system. So the point of this

is if this aircraft did not have a

transponder on you actually would not

have seen the other aircraft on your

flight radar which is right here. So

this is the uh flight radar website

here. You could see that separation

where at one point they got within 350

ft of each other which is extremely

dangerous. Like this should not have

happened and it looks very much like

this aircraft was on a pretty straight

shot here. Uh so uh we'll have to look

in just a moment at the altitudes of

where they are but it looks like

Southwest is climbing out of Burbank. So

it's possible they haven't gotten into

class A yet. And it's entirely possible

that this aircraft is on a VFR flight

plan or basically just VFR, so not on a

flight plan, visual flight rules. Uh, as

long as they were under 18,000 ft, they

could have just theoretically been doing

their own thing. And it's possible that

this aircraft was never actually in

communication with uh air traffic

control because you don't need flight

following in uh a you know, a nonclass

alpha. Yeah. See, look at this. The

Southwest flight is at 14,000 ft. So,

it's entirely possible that this

aircraft was not on the same frequency

as uh uh the Southwest plane who they've

they're on an IFR flight plan. They may

not be they might not even have flight

following. So, there's no potential

communication between the two two

aircraft, which isn't great. But,

obviously, this is where, you know, the

uh Southwest Desend, which we get looks

like. Yeah, right here we're at 145

and then here we descend about 500.

That resolution advisory. Oh, I'm sorry.

Hold on a sec. They clicked to the other

one. The other plane is at 145. So that

the southwest plane is actually climbing

directly into the hawker.

So air traffic control should have been

guiding southwest further to the right.

Oh, here's Magic Mountain. uh especially

because this guy may not have been on

cons but because this guy had his te his

ADSB on the resolution advisory worked

as intended. So this sort of like media

spectacle around oh my gosh near miss

was actually just a way of saying hey

our technology was working as intended.

our uh you know avoidance technology,

our traffic avoidance technology,

collision avoidance systems are working

as they're supposed to because again

you're on not the same radio

communications. ATC is apparently, you

know, I I don't want to ever point

blame, but like somebody's sleeping

here. Somebody's not paying attention to

these converging paths. Uh and uh

unfortunately

you had a resolution advisory which

isn't great because it scares passengers

and nobody wants to have that feeling.

Again, nothing like structurally bad is

expected to happen to an aircraft. In

this case, these aircraft are designed

to be able to maneuver for exactly these

purposes. So even though it feels really

funky, it's actually incredibly safe.

And if I heard at that moment, like if I

were a passenger and I heard the pilot

say, "Hey, we got a TCAST, you know,

resolution advisory." Uh, no problem.

Nothing wrong. The rest of your flight

could be totally fine. Uh, no issue here

at all. So, now the bigger problem is

what if this aircraft was actually a

military aircraft and it had its

transponder off? Well, if its

transponder were off, it would not show

up at all. It would essentially be

invisible to the Southwest aircraft and

the Southwest aircraft would not have

gotten a resolution advisory. So that

whoop whoop descend that would not

happen because the system would not see

the military aircraft. And this is what

frustrates me and we actually talked

about this a few days ago is that

military aircraft uh generally in in

America fly with their transponders off.

I personally think that should not be

allowed. I personally think we should

mandate military aircraft within the

United States uh certainly under 45,000

feet to fly with their transponders on

because it's dangerous especially when

air traffic control can't even see you.

Uh that's scary and our tcast systems

are basically overridden. This is in my

opinion what led to the uh disaster of

um the PTOAC going into DC where we had

a uh you know the crash between the

helicopter uh and the commercial

airliner. Absolutely horrible. These

things could be avoided if transponders

are actually on. And we know in that

PTOIC crash that the transponder was not

on uh which contributed to the confusion

that ended up leading uh to that that

crash or that accident. Another video

where I covered this was actually this

just about a week ago. B-52 bomber near

miss is a disgrace, right? And it's a

disgrace and you should watch the video,

but it's a disgrace because our FAA

should require military aircraft to fly

with transponders on. And the reason why

is exactly this. When somebody makes an

oopsies, I'm not pointing the finger at

anyone, but when somebody makes an

oopsies and misses these trajectories

and we get this close at a at a similar

altitude of a climbing claim and VFR

traffic and nobody's paying attention,

nobody's communicating to this aircraft

because they're not on the same

frequency, then at least we can rely on

technology to back us up. But the

military is allowed to fly with this

technology off, which means now you are

only relying on humans, which is stupid.

And it's just a matter of time before

more people lose their lives and more

people end up dying because of some

stupid idea that, oh well, the military

gets to fly with transponders off

because they would do so in enemy

territory. Well, no duh. But when we're

at home, turn your transponder on. Why

not advertise these things that you told

us here? I feel like nobody else knows

about this. We'll we'll try a little

advertising and see how it goes.

>> Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you.

>> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst

and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great

to get your take.