One person was killed when planes reportedly owned by a Broomfield flying club and a Douglas County company crashed while landing in Fort Morgan Sunday.
The accident happened at Fort Morgan Municipal Airport at about 10:45 Sunday morning. The two private planes collided, caught fire and crashed in a field just outside the airport, according to authorities.
The two planes involved were a Cessna 172 registered to Bell Ornithopters Flying Club, Inc., based in Broomfield, and an Extra Flugzeugbau EA300 registered to a limited liability corporation called 330AM in Castle Rock, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
One person on board the Extra Flugzeugbau EA300 died at the scene; another was taken to the hospital, the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release on Facebook.
“A small Cessna was on final approach to the airport when it was struck mid-air by a second small plane. Both aircraft crashed and caught fire. There were two people in each plane,” the Sheriff’s Office reported. “The two occupants of the Cessna sustained minor injuries and were released at the scene. One occupant of the other plane was transported to a local hospital, while the fourth individual was pronounced deceased at the scene by the Morgan County Coroner’s Office.”
Calls to the coroner’s office to identify the person killed were not answered Monday.
The US Department of Transportation FAA Registry said the Cessna is a fixed wing single engine plane manufactured in 1975 that was registered to Bell Ornithopters Flying Club. The Aviation Safety Network, which compiles a database of aviation incidents, reported that the Cessna had departed from Broomfield-Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport with a destination of Fort Morgan Municipal Airport.
The club did not respond to an email Monday seeking comment.
The club’s website describes it as a private, non-profit club of flying enthusiasts who own two planes kept at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, northwest of Denver.
“Our planes are meticulously maintained and have the latest avionics,” it states. The club is now a half-century old, having formed in 1974 and now has about 50 pilots who have “fly-ins, picnics, airport open house, holiday dinner meetings, general meetings, spring and fall plane wash, etc.”
The Aviation Safety Network also reported that the other plane involved in the crash, the Extra, was manufactured in 2015 and registered to a company called 333AM LLC in Castle Rock, and noted that both the departure and destination airports for the Extra were Fort Morgan Municipal Airport. A record for a company with that name could not be found in the Colorado Secretary of State’s business database Monday.
The Aviation Safety Network’s report said data suggests that the Cessna was “on a straight in approach to the runway while the Extra was on a left base-to-final turn to the same runway.”
Both the FAA and the NTSB will investigate the crash.
