What: Two small planes :
Mesa County Sheriff’s Department single-engine Cessna 210 en route from from Grand Junction to the state penal system;
single-engine Cessna 180 4 seater, single engine plane
Where: in the sagebrush and scrub oak at the foot of the towering Grand Mesa about 10 miles south of the Grand Junction Regional Airport near Kannah Creek.
When: Wednesday
Who: six people ( two inmates, a deputy and a pilot. ); (pilot Tom Haefeli and passenger John Haefeli)
Why: The planes collided in midair; the sheriff’s plane with the inmates aboard made it to the airport and managed a hard landing at 9:48 a.m, with front end damage. The other landed safely in sagebrush ten miles shy of the airport at about 9:30 a.m.. Some of those aboard were taken to a fire station in Whitewater Colorado. Pilot Tom Haefeli is quoted as saying “All of a sudden, there was an airplane headed for us. We tried to dive under him and they just clipped us and took our vertical stabilizer off.”
The cause is under investigation and the FAA will look into weather, pilot error, tower air controllers, and flight plan. No one was injured.
