One person died during a mid-air collision of two planes at the Minden-Tahoe airport in Nevada at 9:47 a.m. on September 16.
There are no details yet on the names, sex, or ages of the people aboard the two planes. The planes were both private, small craft. One was a Globe GC-1B, and the other a Cessna 206. Both planes are single-engine propeller craft.
After the collision one plane managed to land on the runway while the other “crashed into a field,” according to a statement from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), one of the planes held a pilot and a passenger, while the second plane held a pilot and two passengers. Of the five people between the two planes, one died in the crash. There is no word yet on what may have caused the collision.
Witnesses on the ground say that the Globe GC-1B caught fire mid-air before it plummeted into a nearby field. When emergency crews responded the plane was fully engulfed. Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are working on the investigation. The agencies will be collecting information about the weather, radar screens, pilot health, and any maintenance records for both planes.
If things proceed as usual, the public can expect a preliminary report in about a month, while the final crash report will be released in one to two years.
The airport was closed for a time after the incident but has since reopened.
This is the second fatality at the small Nevada airstrip in less than a month. An experimental plane carrying two people took off on August 20 in the morning and promptly crashed, killing one of the two occupants. The home-made plane was described as a Lockwood AirCam, and the cause of that crash still has not been determined. The name of the person who died has also not been released.
