Appropriate Term?

[barrowman]

when airline companies talk about a "near miss", why is it misleading?

[dannydingbat]

I think the media use this term to make a situation more dramatic than it is. The official term is, I believe, an "Air Miss" with no indication as to proximity

[Carby]

Think about the term 'Near Miss'. If you nearly miss then surely you collide? So therefore a near miss is a hit.

[Clanad]

Understood in it's historical context, the term near miss is actually quite concise and used throughout the aviation world. Its definition is found in the bible of aviation, The Airman's Information Manual : "...A near midair collision is defined as an incident associated with the operation of an aircraft in which a possibility of collision occurs as a result of proximity of less than 500 feet to anotheraircraft, or a report is received from a pilot or a flight crew member
stating that a collision hazard existed between two or more aircraft."
Unfortunately, for the public at large, it should always be presented thusly: near-miss. It simply means that two (or more) aircraft missed each other when in very near proximity. My understanding is the organization known as ICAO, which is international in scope adopted the term many years ago to capture the data on such events in trying to find better ways of avoiding them. One of the outgrowths of the data and subsequent technological advances is a system universally used by airlines and a large segment of other aircraft is the Traffic-Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). it's ingenious in that it doesn't require any input from ground based facilities since it's each aircraft's equipment "talking" to all other so equipped aircraft...

[Hammer]

I think it's misleading because of the definition of 'near'. If Clanad is correct (sounds like they know what they're talking about!) then 500ft is not exactly 'near' from most people's perspectives.

And Carby, a near miss is a miss that was near, not nearly a miss. It is a miss, but nearly a hit.

[Carby]

Hammer meez and yooz is gunna get fighting soon moosh!