2021 Colorado mid-air collision

At about 10:20 AM local time, a Cirrus SR22 light aircraft collided in mid-air with Key Lime Air Flight 970, an air charter cargo flight from Salida, Colorado, operated by a Swearingen SA226-TC Metroliner over Cherry Creek State Park in Arapahoe County. The collision destroyed a large section of the cabin of the Metroliner and damaged the empennage, but the pilot—who was the sole aircraft occupant and, based on communications with air traffic control, was initially unaware of the extent of the damage—was able to make a safe landing at Centennial Airport despite the significant damage to the fuselage and subsequent failure of the right-hand engine. The pilot of the Cirrus, which was a private rental aircraft on a local flight from Centennial Airport, deployed the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) and made a safe parachute-assisted forced landing near Cherry Creek Reservoir; the pilot and single passenger were not injured.[1] It was covered heavily by local and national media outlets due in part to the lack of fatalities or injuries to the parties involved, a rare outcome in a midair collision.[2] Aviation news site AVweb dubbed the incident "the Centennial Miracle".[3]

The NTSB determined that the accident was caused by failures of airmanship and air traffic control (ATC). The SR22 pilot flew too fast in the traffic pattern and overshot his turns from downwind to base and base to final, resulting in impinging on the extended centerline of the parallel runway where the Metroliner was on final approach for landing. Furthermore different ATC controllers were working traffic on different frequencies on the two parallel runways, resulting in required traffic advisories to the Metroliner crew being not transmitted. This meant that the Metroliner crew was unaware of the SR22 and thus unable to take evasive action.[4][5]