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Before training I figured aviation was so regulated that once you were inside a towered zone, ATC had the picture, transponders did their thing, and everybody could see everybody, you basically just had to fly the airplane and not stare at the ground, not long ago that idea took a real beating.

Flying with a buddy in his new Cirrus G7, he just took delivery and I was right seat with the GoPro running, we were going to do a little walkthrough on the airplane on the way back, we picked up the controller approaching the field, got our clearance into the zone, doing everything by the book.

Then the traffic system pipes up traffic 12 oclock, 2 miles, same altitude, couple seconds later, traffic 12 oclock, 1 mile. I look up out the windscreen and theres a plane coming dead at us, same altitude, pointed right at us, i yelled and pointed, my buddy banked left hard and the other airplane went by what felt like a wingspan off our right side. GoPro was rolling the whole time so I caught it, zoomed in a bit on the clip so you can actually see how close.

We sat there in silence for a few seconds, then we called up the controller, basically what the hell was that, controller went and talked to the other airplane, turned out to be a student pilot, never saw us, was off her assigned altitude, and heading the wrong direction

I dont know exactly what the takeaway is supposed to be here, but mine is this., even when you are talking to a controller, even with transponders all around, even inside a towered zone, see and avoid is still the thing keeping you alive, did not expect this kind of thing could just happen with the system working the way its supposed to, apparently it can.

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