Massive luck for two crews today being involved in a mid air collision while on approach to Denver Centennial airport.
The Cirrus appears to have lost it’s complete tail, the crew subsequently released the parashute.
The Metroliner defied all known damage and landed…. with large sections of the cabin missing and one engine shut down…
The most amazing fact out of this: Nobody got hurt.
I suppose this may well be the most spectacular CAPS Save yet…. only that the Metroliner did not have that luxury.
Pics and report here:
Remarkably the Metro didn’t break apart, must be a structurally strong airframe.
Incredible! Very very lucky people.
Appears the Cirrus overshot the centerline to 17R with the Metro being on Final for 17L….
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Appears the Cirrus overshot the centerline to 17R with the Metro being on Final for 17L….
Apparently it even overshot the centreline for 17L!
Wow! That’s one amazing mid-air, unbelievable the Metroliner stayed in one (slightly ragged) piece.
As an aside – I’m a bit surprised the Metroliner can be flown single pilot.
The other thing is that it’s likely both aircraft had both ADS-B in and out (the Cirrus certainly had ADS-B in).
alioth wrote:
The other thing is that it’s likely both aircraft had both ADS-B in and out (the Cirrus certainly had ADS-B in).
Indeed, you can watch it on FR24. Playback seem to be minimum of x12 speed, so not so each to get too much precision. But there doesn’t look to be a lot of room between 17L and 17R vs the distance out that they were when they meet.
They met at about 4.5km out, and there is about 200mtrs between the runways.
Was this an old cirrus? What about ads-b? How can the cirrus guy not see the metro and hit him?
Airborne_Again wrote:
Apparently it even overshot the centreline for 17L!
Probably already using the insurance money as down payment for a vision jet ;)
Snoopy wrote:
Was this an old cirrus? What about ads-b? How can the cirrus guy not see the metro and hit him?
He turned in front of the metroliner. So presumably he was looking right towards the runway trying to position onto final, while flying into the path of the metroliner approaching him from the left.
I’m not used to such closely spaced parallel runways. Is it normal to have two aircraft approaching perpendicular to one another?
The Metroliner was established straight in. The Cirrus was on a right base, just turning right onto final at the point of contact. Is this normal procedure in parallel runway operations? Or would the aircraft be expected to be both on final, aligned with the runway, before they are allowed to be side by side?
