Yesterday at about 6:30pm or so (I think – I didn’t look at my watch but I know the Sox game was already over) we were looking around at the cars at the new Saturn dealership in Fitchburg, which is maybe a mile or so from the Fitchburg airport, and I heard the sound of a plane engine suddenly change (like someone suddenly stepped on the gas) so I looked up – just in time to watch one plane cut right across the path of another, at what appeared to me to be the EXACT same altitude. I mean, I’ve seen planes fly close to each other, but this was a near-miss, no two ways about it. The sound I heard must have been the turning plane trying to speed up when it realized it was turning in front of someone. My best guess is the turning guy was circling in for a landing (taking left turns) and the other guy was taking off, because he continued on straight afterward.
I swear to God, my stomach went up into my throat when I looked up and saw those two planes no more than 100 or 200 feet from each other.
Mr. Dump, who was in a different part of the car lot than I was, confirmed that he looked up too and thought the same thing, that they were seconds from a crash. There was no mistaking how close they were to each other, and why the engine sound changed.
So were those pilots required by some sort of law to report the near miss? I certainly hope so. With all the BS going on because the Fitchburg airport doesn’t have a tower, this kind of thing MUST be on record. It should be on the pilot’s record, and the airport’s record. I am not anti-airport, but I am anti-unsafe flying, and the guy landing most definitely made a horrifically unsafe move.
