CHICAGO, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Two small private planes nearly collided 3,800 feet over Wisconsin, the second near-miss in less than a week.
The planes came within 2.8 horizontal miles and 500 vertical feet of each other Saturday, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. Federal regulations require at least 5 miles of horizontal separation and at least 1,000 feet of vertical separation.
The incident was blamed on a Chicago air traffic controller who allowed a Cessna Caravan 208 turboprop flying out of Chicago's Midway Airport en route to Soldiers Grove, Wis., to come to close to a Cirrus SR-22 that just left Tri-County Regional Airport near Lone Rock, Wis.
This was the second such mistake by a Chicago controller in recent days. Two airliners nearly collided over Indiana Nov. 13 after a controller mistakenly directed a Midwest Airlines plane to descend into the path of a United Express jet bound for Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.
"Two errors in a week at a center does not define a problem. We need to look at it from the proper perspective," FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said. "At Chicago Center, they handle about 3 million flights each year, so one or two controller errors in a week does occur."
