A Colorado company operating a plane involved in a spectacular midair collision Wednesday near Denver runs cargo flights out of the Grand Junction Regional Airport and ran twice-a-day passenger charter flights between Grand Junction and Denver until suspending them in March 2020 after the pandemic hit.
Englewood-based Key Lime Air also has had several significant airborne incidents in recent years, some of them fatal, and one in 2015 when a plane that took off in Rifle suffered engine failure and safely made an emergency landing in Grand Junction.
A plane flying for Key Lime Air collided with a single-engine aircraft Wednesday as the two were preparing to land at Centennial Airport near Denver. The second plane deployed a parachute to land, while the Key Lime Air plane landed after the pilot declared an engine emergency, apparently unaware the aircraft was almost split in half by the collision, according to media reports.
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“Things can turn on a dime around here, and I’m hoping it does with some moisture coming in,” said Jim Genung, a fire manager and fuels specialist based in Rifle. “But I gotta say, it’s starting to look a little bit like we’re going to head into a busy summer again.”
Genung’s jurisdiction with the Upper Colorado Interagency Fire Management Unit includes both Bureau of Land Management and White River National Forest land.
Because indicators are pointing to another busy season, he says, the people who monitor wildfires are in a “heightened state of awareness” looking at this year’s conditions.
Several area airports received a share of $2 million in new grants for specific projects from the State Aeronautical Board on Thursday.
Money for the projects, which were in matching grants, stem from aviation fuel tax revenues and through the American Rescue Plan approved by Congress last month as part of its COVID-19 relief funding.
âThe 100% federal airport grant share contained in the plan allowed us to further leverage Aeronautics Division funding to support more airports across our state, from Delta to Walden to Lamar,â said Shoshana Lew, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation.
The grants, which range from $25,000 to $400,000, went for such things as airfield repaving, maintenance, reconstruction and snow removal equipment.
The same man who crashed in an alfalfa field near Salida in 2019, is dead after the plane he was flying Saturday crashed in a rugged area northwest of Deckers.
CBS News 4 in Denver reported that Lelon Lewis, 66, of Lakewood, was reported missing about 8 p.m. Saturday, and subsequently found Sunday when another craft flying overhead saw his plane.
Search and rescue personnel from the Alpine Rescue team, along with the Jefferson County Sheriffâs Office, were able to reach the crash site in the Lost Creek Wilderness, and identify Lewis.
He was the only person aboard the plane, a single-engine Magnus Fusion 212 Hungarian-made acrobatic plane.
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