Donald Trump’s obsession with attacking Venezuela and stealing its oil is having unintended consequences, as the latest air traffic disaster under his administration was barely avoided.
The pilot of a JetBlue flight reported on Friday that he narrowly avoided colliding with a U.S. military aircraft over the Caribbean after an Air Force refueling tanker passed in front of the commercial plane without broadcasting its position, according to air traffic control radio communications.
“They don’t have their transponder turned on, it’s outrageous,” the JetBlue pilot told an air traffic controller, after identifying the type of plane he had encountered. “We almost had a midair collision up here.”
The radio transmissions detail the experience of JetBlue Flight 1112, bound for New York after leaving Curaçao, a small island in the southern Caribbean about 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. Twenty minutes after takeoff, the aircraft suddenly leveled off midclimb, according to flight tracking data. On the radio, the JetBlue pilot said he was forced to stop the plane’s ascent to its cruising altitude to avoid a collision with the tanker.
