Two planes collided in mid-air south of Denver, and both managed to land safely. One with a huge chunk of its fuselage missing, and other came down on a parachute. Current report is no injuries in the air or on the ground.
This picture!
The middle fell off. That’s not very typical.
I was thinking more about the other ones. The ones the middle doesn’t fall off.
Radio matched with radar tracks up already here:
Remarkably, Key Lime 970 (with that gaping hole) did not realize he’d been hit, calmly declared emergency thinking his right engine had failed.
It’s a shame there was a collision but I am very impressed and gratified by the engineering that allowed all human parties to escape unharmed.
I’ve never heard of an airplane with a parachute. Is that common?
Here you go
Becoming very common for light planes. I first heard of this around 1990 and got to talk to a pilot who did a test landing with the device. At that time the parachute assembly was mounted under the plane to the hard points used for the landing gear. Once the parachute successfully deployed without snagging on anything it had to let down the plane upside down without starting to swing like a pendulum. If it started swinging like that it might hit the ground on the downswing which wouldn’t be much better than no parachute at all. The landing was totally successful.
I hear some planes are built so the middles don’t fall off at all…