{"id":70990,"date":"2025-12-15T13:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/70990\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T13:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T13:01:10","slug":"jetblue-flight-narrowly-avoids-collision-with-air-force-tanker-near-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/70990\/","title":{"rendered":"JetBlue flight narrowly avoids collision with Air Force tanker near Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New York-bound JetBlue flight had to halt its ascent<\/a> Friday to avoid colliding with a US Air Force refueling tanker supporting the American military buildup near Venezuela<\/a>, with the airline pilot calling his opposite number\u2019s actions \u201coutrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe almost had a midair collision up here,\u201d the pilot of JetBlue Flight 1112, bound for JFK Airport from Curacao, told local air traffic contorol, according to a recording of the conversation made public Sunday. \u201cThey passed directly in our flight path. \u2026 They don\u2019t have their transponder turned on, it\u2019s outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pilot continued: \u201cWe just had traffic pass directly in front of us within 5 miles of us \u2014 maybe 2 or 3 miles \u2014 but it was an air-to air-refueler from the United States Air Force and he was at our altitude. We had to stop our climb.\u201d<\/p>\n

A New York-bound JetBlue flight had to halt its ascent to avoid colliding with a US Air Force refueling tanker supporting the American military buildup near Venezuela. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been outrageous with the unidentified aircraft within our air,\u201d a controller responded to the JetBlue aircraft.<\/p>\n

The incident took place after the US military has launched nearly two dozen strikes targeting suspected drug-trafficking vessels<\/a> in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific that have killed more than 80 people, part of a pressure campaign to oust authoritarian Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have reported this incident to federal authorities and will participate in any investigation,\u201d said Derek Dombrowski, a spokesman for JetBlue. \u201cOur crewmembers are trained on proper procedures for various flight situations, and we appreciate our crew for promptly reporting this situation to our leadership team.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Federal Aviation Administration warned US aircraft last month to \u201cexercise caution\u201d when in Venezuelan airspace \u201cdue to the worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon referred The Associated Press to the Air Force for comment. The Air Force didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The JetBlue airline pilot called the tanker\u2019s actions \u201coutrageous.\u201d G.N.Miller\/NYPost<\/p>\n

The US military killed on Friday killed four \u201cnarco-terrorists\u201d in another strike on a boat trafficking drugs off the coast of Venezuela, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted to X. X\/SecWar<\/p>\n

Curacao, a Caribbean island controlled by The Netherlands, lies just 40 miles off the northern coast of Venezuela.<\/p>\n

With Post wires<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New York-bound JetBlue flight had to halt its ascent Friday to avoid colliding with a US Air…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14033,29208,9,11,10,87,58,7318],"class_list":{"0":"post-70990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-air-force","9":"tag-jetblue","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-us-news","15":"tag-venezuela"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}