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Planes passing each other.
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Previously:
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...183#post199606
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...027#post134082
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...473#post151107
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...595#post197458
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...306#post157987
Back in the day before cell phone cameras and such, I experienced an incident just like this but a good deal closer when flying eastbound over the Phoenix area. If I wasn't so surprised by the other planes appearance I would have been able to read the tail number.
Another incident a few years later... and even much, much closer ... when flying in the Washington DC area, a B1 bomber crossed under us (T-bone style). If I had been seated on the approaching side it was I-could-probably-have-seen-the-pilot-waving close!
I do not miss those business-travel days AT ALL!
I have seen this happen to me so many times. Though not usually that close, but still close enough I could what model the other plane was and sometimes it's identification.
These days, after Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM) was made available to most aircraft, due to much improved navigation equipment, especially Altimeters, there is only a need to maintain altitude separations of 1000 feet between aircraft above 29,000 feet.
Returning from LA a few years ago I notices a P-51 Mustang a few thousand feet below and to the side, headed in the same direction. The contrast in technical progress was striking. There was a pilot sitting behind a hot, vibrating, roaring Merlin V-12 probably pushing a bit over 300 MPH! Here I was, sitting with a few hundred people in quiet, air conditioned comfort, relaxing with a cup of coffee, looking out the window, passing him about 200 mph faster!
I am NOT a pilot but this just didn’t look dangerously close
This is the reason there are no flying cars...