Mondo Knows Facts
Radar controllers keep aircraft miles apart
En route jets are separated by five nautical miles horizontally or a thousand feet vertically, tighter on approach Separation standards are published rules rather than controller judgement, although controllers apply them. Above about 8,700 metres most airspace uses 300 metre vertical spacing, and 600 metres where aircraft lack modern altimetry. Reduced vertical separation, introduced in the 1990s, roughly doubled the usable cruising levels over the North Atlantic. It sits in Mondo's technology collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Tags: air-traffic-control, aviation, safety
Radar controllers keep aircraft miles apart: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- En route jets are separated by five nautical miles horizontally or a thousand feet vertically, tighter on approach. The figure is taken from Eurocontrol, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a technology fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Technology shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.