Points for Pilots

Until recently, collisions between aircraft were rare, supposedly because pilots used See and Avoid. But now ADS-B information displayed in our cockpit on the iPad reveals that this explanation just wasn’t correct. There were hardly any collisions because the odds of two aircraft meeting in the air were next to zero, due to the small volume taken up by two aircraft and the comparatively huge volume of available air space. But “next to zero” does not mean “zero,” as we found out during a recent trip, where in two instances, on the same day, we were mighty close to a midair collision. So how did we avoid these potential collisions? We saw those airplanes on our iPad, since we now have both ADS-B In and ADS-B Out, and thus are continuously served with the location and speed of all aircraft within a so-called hockey puck surrounding our aircraft. It has a diameter of 30 miles and extends above and below us for 3,500 ft. Hockey puck for which traffic is displayed. Source: FAA docu