http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/feb06/390185.asp
Midair collision kills 3
One plane crashes; other lands safely
By JAMAAL ABDUL-ALIM, LARRY SANDLER and SUSANNE RUST
[email protected]
Posted: Feb. 5, 2006
Three people were killed in a midair collision near the Dodge-Jefferson county line Sunday when the cargo plane they were in struck another cargo plane and then crashed and burned, authorities said.
Planes Collide
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A cargo plane that collided with another plane in midair sits at the Dodge County Airport in Juneau after making an emergency landing Sunday.
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Three Killed
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The plane containing the three victims crashed about 5 p.m. near highways 19 and Q, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said in a recorded message. It was not immediately clear from her message whether the impact of the collision or the subsequent crash caused the three deaths.
Three people in the other plane landed safely in Juneau and suffered no injuries, Cory said.
Both planes were multi-engine small cargo planes and had taken off from Milwaukee together and were flying together, but their departure times and destinations were unknown, Cory said.
Both planes belonged to Air Cargo Carriers Inc. of Milwaukee. Randy Jackson, a dispatcher with the company, said the company plans to investigate but had no further comment.
Patti Tripi and her husband, Lewis, were doing their taxes Sunday afternoon in their home on West Road, when they heard an airplane "that didn't sound right," Patti said.
Then they heard a crash so loud that they thought something had hit their home.
They looked out toward the yard and saw pieces of debris falling from the sky. They walked out into the backyard and saw billowing black smoke across a field about a quarter to a half-mile away.
They looked up and saw another airplane circling above, and that's when they realized two planes were involved.
Lewis Tripi drove to the site to see if there were any survivors; he was unable to find any bodies. When he returned home, the bottoms of his pants reeked of fuel from the field.
Ed Wegner, who lives on Highway 19 about a mile from the crash site, said he and his wife, Grace, were sitting in their living room when they heard a "real loud boom" that "shook the house a little bit."
"We looked outside, and there was a lot of black smoke coming from the woods," Wegner said.
"We went over there, and you could see one plane in the field completely disintegrated," he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are investigating the crash.
3 on other plane not injured
Dodge County Airport Manager Tim Bentheimer identified the plane that landed at his airport as a Shorts 360. He confirmed that the plane was involved in a collision and that the three people aboard were uninjured, but said he had no further information.
According to the Air Cargo Carriers Inc. Web site, that aircraft has a range of 500 miles, a top speed of 220 mph and a cargo capacity of 6,000 to 7,500 pounds. The company says it has the world's largest fleet of Shorts cargo aircraft, but does not indicate how many planes it flies.
Air Cargo Carriers is a 20-year-old company, based at Mitchell International Airport.
A route map on the company's Web site shows that, as of September, the company was flying regularly scheduled routes to airports in 14 states in the Midwest, the South and the West Coast. Wisconsin was not among those states, and a flight schedule on the site shows no regularly scheduled flights on Sundays.
The company's Web site went out of service shortly before 8 p.m. Sunday, less than three hours after the crash.
Two Air Cargo Carriers employees were seriously injured when another Shorts 360 slid off the end of a runway while landing at Oshawa Airport in Ontario, Canada, on Dec. 10, 2004, according to the NTSB. That is the only other accident involving the company listed in the NTSB's online database.
The last fatal air crash in Wisconsin was on Sept. 24, 2005, the NTSB database shows. Three people were killed when a sightseeing helicopter hit a power line and crashed into Hammil Lake, in the Town of Drummond in Bayfield County.
From the Feb. 6, 2006, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
