CANADA--Update...Mid-Air Scare for Traffic Spotter

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Mid-air scare for traffic spotter

Tuesday, March 14, 2000 By JONATHAN KINGSTONE AND SARAH GREEN, TORONTO SUN Popular airborne traffic reporter Darryl Dahmer narrowly escaped a frightening mid-air collision with another small plane over Pickering yesterday.

The longtime 680 NEWS/CHFI radio reporter's plane and a second Cessna -- reportedly piloted by a student -- touched around 5 p.m. in the skies just east of the Scarborough border.

Both planes landed safely.

"He's relieved that he's alive," Dahmer's boss, 680 NEWS director Stephanie Smyth, said last night. "Make no mistake, he's fazed by it.

MAGNITUDE

"He put in perspective for me the magnitude of this sort of incident ... It's highly unusual you can walk away from this kind of thing alive."

Dahmer was flying the Cessna 337 -- dubbed Skymaster One -- over Hwy. 401 and Whites Rd. when the "in-air incident" occurred, Smyth said.

Louis Garneau, of Nav Canada, which is responsible for air navigation, said the collision took place between Dahmer's plane and an Island Air Cessna 172 on a training run with an instructor and student. The landing gear in the nose of the Cessna 172 and the left vertical tail strut of Dahmer's plane "touched."

Dahmer, a traffic spotter for 25 years, will be back in the air today, Smyth said.

http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoNews/ts.ts-03-14-0009.html

-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 14, 2000


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