Pilots, passenger uninjured after Colo. midair plane collision
DENVER — The pilot of an airplane that collided with another midair near Denver last week requested an emergency landing for engine failure, not knowing that his plane was nearly ripped in half, according to air traffic control audio. Miraculously, both planes landed and no one was hurt, officials said.
The planes were getting ready to land at a small regional airport in a Denver suburb Wednesday when they collided, according to the National Transportation Safety Board and South Metro Fire Rescue.
The pilot who requested the emergency landing was the only person aboard a twinengine Fairchild Metroliner that landed at Centennial Airport despite major damage to its tail section. The plane is owned by a Colorado-based Key Lime Air, which operates cargo aircraft.
“Looks like the right engine failed, so I’m gonna continue my landing here,” the pilot said in an audio clip with air traffic control.
Experts say the positive outcome of the collision was a combination of luck and advanced life-saving technology.
“It’s very rare for me to be able to say ‘midair’ and ‘no fatalities’ in the same sentence,” said Joseph LoRusso, a Broomfield, Colorado-based aviation attorney and commercially rated pilot.
The damage to the Metroliner’s rear fuselage was in the “perfect location,” said Anthony Brickhouse, an associate professor of aerospace and occupational safety at the Daytona Beach, Florida, campus of EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University.
“If it was the flight deck: Bad outcome. The wings: Bad outcome. The tail: Bad outcome. It happened in the perfect place for the pilot to make it down,” he said.
The second plane, a single-engine 2016 Cirrus SR22, was rented by Independence Aviation, the company said in a statement. Its pilot successfully deployed the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System designed to slow the craft’s descent after a collision.
Brickhouse estimates that the parachute system, manufactured by North Carolinabased BRS Aerospace, has saved “at least a couple of hundred lives” since its inception.
The Cirrus plane had a pilot and one passenger on board when the pilot deployed a red-and-white parachute and drifted down to a safe landing in a field near homes in Cherry Creek State Park, Arapahoe County sheriff ’s Deputy John Bartmann said.
“Every one of these pilots needs to go buy a lottery ticket right now,” Bartmann said. “I don’t remember anything like this — especially everybody walking away. I mean that’s the amazing part of this.”