When I was taking flying lessons way back when, I was getting some solo time in and was coming in to land on 32R. There was another plane coming in on 32L at the same time. The problem is he was actually coming down on 32R. The controller's voice got higher and louder the closer this guy came to me. I ended up having to pull off and away from under him and go around as the guy in the other plane just didn't get that he was going to land on the wrong runway. I was counting rivits on his belly at the time they told me to go around.
Scary stuff.
i think the closest i've ever been to another aircraft with both in the air was about 200 feet.
the moving vietnam wall was in medford township. the mayor asked us if we could take some airborn pics during a ceremony. we agreed of course.
there were 3 of us in the cessna. gary was flying, i was riding right seat, and stan was the photog. all garys job was, was to take us over the target(the wall) at decent alt(we were at 1,500 ft) and angle for stan to get pics.
my job was to scan for traffic, obstructions(there's a pair of radio towers that are 1,500 ft tall about 2 miles from where we were), and work the radios,,,,,,basically let gary concentrate on just flying.
on our 3rd pass over target, i saw another cessna, about a mile off our left wing, co-alt, flying parallel to us. i called him out to gary, he noted it, and went back to flying. by the time i finished scanning and looked back, the other cessna was now about 3/4 of a mile, coming right for us, still co-alt.
i told gary, he looked, chopped throttle to idle, and gently pushed hte nose over, as i called to the other cessna alerting him we were there. never got a reply from the other cessna, but stan watched him fly right over us.......WAY too close. we leveled at 800 ft, looked for this guy, but couldn't find him.
did a steep turn, and as the nose was swinging south, we saw him at treetop level about 3 miles out, heading away. we climbed back up to 1500, finished our runs, and headed back to the airport.
i spotted the dude again, and he flew directly across short final at the airport, at treetop. we reported it on unicom, so the airport personal would meet the guy if he landed. never got his tail number.