Southwest flight from Burbank drops hundreds of feet to avoid possible collision
A Southwest flight climbing away from Burbank Airport suddenly descended hundreds of feet Friday afternoon, possibly to avoid a mid-air collision.
The drop of around 500 feet came moments after the plane had been gaining altitude steadily since takeoff, causing tense moments on the plane. Passengers said on social media that they were startled by the move.
A military jet was headed southwest to Naval Base Ventura County in Point Mugu and was at a similar altitude — 14,525 feet — when the Southwest flight dropped, per Flightradar24.
The planes were around five miles apart and within 400 vertical feet of one another, headed in opposite directions, when the Southwest flight took evasive action, flight data on the website showed. The fighter jet stopped its own steady descent and maintained its height for several minutes after the incident.
That’s twice in one week that a military aircraft was in the flight path of a commercial aircraft in the US. In both instances, collision was averted by the commercial pilot taking evasive maneuvers.
Indeed. “The FAA is investigating the event…”
I actually saw this on TV earlier and took over 2 hours for me to find something online.
A møøse once bit my airplane…
😂😂😂 …so glad no one was seriously injured ‘cause I’m LMAO
Were the military jets on flightradar24? They often aren’t. As far as we know, we don’t know the military craft didn’t take maneuvers. Generally, as long as both pilots see the other craft, they’ll both take maneuvers. There are rules on who goes up and who goes down. I just doubt the military planes were playing chicken because a midair crash won’t go well for them either
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/southwest-flight-abruptly-descends-avoid-mid-air-collision/story?id=124084290
This article makes it sound like it was.
You’re right. I found it in FR24 from the tail number in your link. Looks like the Hunter (N335AX) turned right at the same time SWA1496 dipped, although I have no idea if the Hunter was simply realigning itself for landing. The Hunter was ahead of SW. July 25, 2025 at 19:03 UTC, over Russ. SW was climbing NE, the Hunter was descending WSW. The altitude status has too low a refresh rate and low precision, though I don’t know if premium subscription makes that better
Both flights on flightradar24 are linked in the article. No need to speculate.
The original link didn’t work for me. Found the tail in another link. I’m just a casual FR24 user that clicks planes to see what’s overhead. Didn’t know you could search by tail number. I get a fair amount of military helicopter activity over me but they often are unidentified and not tracked. Something about low altitude I guess.
Though I have seen/heard/tracked a P-8A circling above at 18k for a couple hours, which is spooky as shit at midnight.
Usually they are because they need to have their transponders on for this exact reason. They usually turn them off when they’re entering no fly zones / going on missions. During the build up to Iran firing missiles on US airbases in Qatar you could watch a lot of German and British military planes fly close to the border, turn off their transponders, then reappear a while later on the other side of the no fly zone.