[_s]

Private Pilot here - just thought I'd chime in quickly;

Many aviation enthusiasts / pilots first go to is to have a look at the flight data - usually available on FlightAware / FlightRadar24 and a few other websites, plus LiveATC usually can provide recordings of the flights communications to towers as well. We should refrain from using just those data points to draw conclusions to the cause; the NTSB (and other orgs) will perform an investigation and the report will be made public (both interim, and final ones), and changes are almost always made to processes / systems, and often to the virtual or physical items that led to this incident.

There are a few more photos and insights from various folks that were there at the time and captured a few moments on the reddit thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/nauck8/mid_air_just...

Note - it's incredibly rare for a midair not to result in fatalities so an incredible amount of luck all around.

[sokoloff]

It’s not incredibly rare. Around 2 in 5 midair mishaps result in no fatalities.

https://iflyamerica.org/midairs.asp

This one was incredibly lucky, especially for the Key Lime aircraft.

[mannykannot]

Interesting - that's higher than I would have expected, but apparently explaind by most collisions being in the pattern or otherwise near an airport (makes sense now that I think about it.) At least in the pattern, for most of the time, everyone is going in approximately the same direction (even this case.)

[lbriner]

My guess would be that only in the worst scenarios does a collision involve a full-impact. In most cases I would expect either or both pilots to be taking avoiding action so that you might get some more minor scrapes which allow you to limp home.

[sundvor]

Thanks, that does seem incredibly lucky indeed.

Also, I like the headline including "all parties ok".