To mitigate the described problem , many recommend , as legally allowed in very limited authorized airspace , that planes fly one or two miles offset from the center of the airway ( to the right side ) thus eliminating the problem only in the head-on collision scenario . The International Civil Aviation Organization 's ( ICAO ) " Procedures for Air Navigation -- Air Traffic Management Manual , " authorizes lateral offset only in oceanic and remote airspace worldwide . However , this workaround for the particular case of a head-on collision threat on a common assigned airway fails to address the navigation paradox in general , and it fails to specifically address the inherent system safety fault intolerance inadvertently designed into international air traffic safety regulations . 4 To be specific , in the cases of intersecting flight paths where either aircraft is not on an airway ( for example , flying under a " direct " clearance , or a temporary diversion clearance for weather threats ) , or where intersecting aircraft flights are on deliberately intersecting airways , these more general threats receive no protection from flying one or two miles to the right of the center of the airway . Intersecting flight paths must still intersect somewhere . As with the midair collision over Germany , an offset to the right of an airway would have simply changed the impact point by a mile or two away from where the intersection actually did occur . Of the 342 deaths since 1997 so far caused by the lack of a linear cruising altitude rule ( like ACCAR ) , only the head-on collision over the Amazon could have been prevented if either pilot had been flying an offset to the right of the airway centerline . In contrast , ACCAR systematically separates conflicting traffic in all airspace at all altitudes on any heading , whether over the middle of the ocean or over high-density multinational-interface continental airspace . Nothing about the Reduced Vertical Separation Minima ( RVSM ) system design addresses the inherent vulnerability of the air traffic system to expected faults in hardware and human performance , as experienced in the Namibian , German , Amazon and Japanese accidents . 5
midair collision over Germany
2002 Überlingen mid-air collision
Navigation paradox