From New York Times, I'm Michael O'Borrow. This is a Daily.

Today, a Times investigation has found that US passenger planes

come dangerously close to crashing into each other.

Far more frequently than the public knows.

My colleague, Cindy Ember, explains why an aviation system known for its safety

is producing such a steady stream of close calls.

It's Tuesday, September 5th.

Cindy, tell us how this investigation started for you.

You might remember back in the winter, travel for passengers

became a total nightmare.

Southwest had a meltdown and then a couple weeks later,

there was a system failure at the Federal Aviation Administration.

This led to lots of delays, lots of cancellations,

and thousands of passengers were stranded.

They were livid. Congress was mad.

Our editor came to us and essentially said,

go figure out why air travel is so annoying.

Right. And seemingly so broken.

And seemingly so broken.

And so we started talking to people in the aviation industry.

We started talking to people who worked at airlines, pilots.

We started talking to air traffic controllers.

...