GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Two small planes carrying a total of six people collided in the air in western Colorado on Wednesday, but both landed safely and no injuries were reported, authorities said.
“This is truly one of those miracles,” said Allen Kenitzer of the Federal Aviation Administration. “Usually with a mid-air collision you have very serious damage and very serious injuries, if you have survivors at all.”
One of the panes was a Mesa County Sheriff’s Department single-engine Cessna 210 carrying two inmates, a deputy and a pilot. The other was a single-engine Cessna 180, but no information was immediately available about the two occupants.
The sheriff’s plane landed at Grand Junction Regional Airport and the other landed amid sagebrush and scrub oak at the foot of the towering Grand Mesa about 10 miles south of the airport.
Sheriff’s spokesman Chuck Warner said the sheriff’s plane had taken off from Grand Junction and the inmates were being transferred to the state prison system, but he didn’t know where the plane was headed.
Grand Junction is about 240 miles west of Denver.
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