this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2025
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After less than six minutes in the air, a privately owned Hawker Hunter fighter jet, crossed less than two miles in front of it within a few hundred feet of its altitude . . . “There was a small initial drop that I thought was just like really bad turbulence,” passenger Steve Ulasewicz told CNN. “And then after that, there was this long free fall.”

He describes being terrified, people screaming and pandemonium in the cabin.

“I definitely thought that the plane was going down, that there was a mechanical issue with it,” Ulasewicz said. Eventually the pilots got on the intercom and told the passengers they had to maneuver the plane to avoid the midair collision.

“The crew of Southwest Flight 1496 responded to two onboard traffic alerts Friday afternoon… requiring them to climb and descend to comply with the alerts,” said Lynn Lunsford, Southwest spokesman in a statement. “Southwest is engaged with the Federal Aviation Administration to further understand the circumstances.”

The fighter jet was flying from El Paso, Texas to Oxnard, California.

The FAA is investigating. It’s not clear if the aircraft were directed so close together or if one of them was in a location where they were not supposed to be.

When the alarms sounded, the Southwest plane dropped about 475 feet and then went back up about 600 feet over the course of about a minute, according to Flightradar24. The fighter jet went up about 100 feet in just a few seconds.

Two Southwest flight attendants are being treated for injuries, but no passengers were hurt, the airline said.

The passenger jet did not declare an emergency and continued the 39-minute flight to Las Vegas, landing about nine minutes ahead of schedule.

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[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's owned by a company, a British Defense Contractor in this case. Pretty common for outdated military jets actually.

[–] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But why? To show off to clients?

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not an industry that I work in, but I know that older jets are often used for general training purposes.

For instance, NASA astronauts still train in T-38 Talons, originally built between 1961-1972. The Space Shuttle Trainers were a modified Gulfstream II, introduced in 1967, before they were retired in 2012 with the Shuttle program.

The first civilian orbital mission, the Inspiration4 crew trained in a MiG-29 which is privately owned by Jared Isaacman, who led the private mission launched by SpaceX back in 2021. The mission was a fundraiser for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, raising over $243 Million in donations. They also performed a number of experiments while in orbit for SpaceX, the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine and investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine. Studies specifically intended to see the effects of orbital flight on ordinary citizens that weren't previously screened and exhaustively trained as professional astronauts.

Older fighter jets are still good for training things at supersonic speeds, real world G forces, etc. that simulators can't reproduce perfectly.

[–] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

Thanks for the info. Appreciate it.