On Sun, 6 Nov 2005, Raoul wrote:

Boltar wrote:

I know someone whos an air traffic controller at LCY. Lets just say
that some of the near misses there have been apparently quite
"stunning" too due to the steep take off and glide slopes.

Near collision, not near miss.

Let's not let the industry parlance, designed not to upset passengers,
prevent us from being truthful about what they really a near
collisions.

No. I take your point, and i realise that this is a widely-repeated
witticism, but it's based on entirely duff grammar. Clearly, these events
are misses, not hits - no planes have ever collided over LCY, as far as
i'm aware - and when we say "near miss", we mean "a miss in which the
planes were near to each other". A "near hit" would be a hit, which is not
what happened.

This is the same thing as a "close shave", which, close as it may be, is
still a shave, and not an act of metaphorical face-hacking.

tom

--
THE DRUMMER FROM DEF LEPPARD'S ONLY GOT ONE ARM!