During today’s flight, I almost collided with another plane.
The cause of the incident was when I was climbing FL391 (at a metric altitude of 11900m), I suddenly noticed an airplane flying towards me at high speed at the same altitude as me.
I didn’t have time to dodge, just as two planes were about to collide. Fortunately, I strictly followed China’s flight altitude regulations, and the two planes narrowly missed each other with an altitude difference of 100 feet.
According to international civil aviation practices, the flight altitude of an aircraft should follow the principle of “East Single West Double”, that is,
- Eastbound – Magnetic track 000 to 179 ° – odd flight levels (FL 290, 330, 370, etc.)
- Westbound – Magnetic track 180 to 359° – even flight levels (FL 310, 350, 390, etc.)
But obviously, the plane flying westward chose the wrong odd altitude layer, and it should have used FL400, FL380 or lower even altitude layers.
I feel very uneasy and regretful about this behavior, and I also hope that everyone will not be aware of this knowledge and avoid making similar mistakes again, especially in busy aviation channels.