2 small planes come close because of air traffic control errors

CHICAGO (AP) — As the busy Thanksgiving travel week began, two small private planes veered dangerously close to each other because of air traffic control errors, marking the second near miss in the area in less than a week.

The planes traveling over central Wisconsin came within 2.8 horizontal miles and 500 vertical feet from each other Saturday. Federal regulations require at least 5 miles of horizontal separation and at least 1,000 feet of vertical separation.

“We were not talking to either airplane,” said Jeffrey Richards, president of the controllers’ union at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Chicago Center in suburban Aurora. “This was really a bad situation.”

One of the planes, a Cessna Caravan 208 turboprop, had taken off from Chicago’s Midway Airport and was traveling to Leeward Farm, a private airport in Soldiers Grove, Wis. The second plane, a Cirrus SR-22, had just departed from the Tri-County Regional Airport near Lone Rock, Wis., when the near miss occurred at about 3,800 feet.