Planes almost collide

Two small private planes veered dangerously close to each other this weekend because of miscommunication between air traffic controllers, marking the second serious error in less than a week for an area radar facility, officials said.

Authorities said the planes traveling over central Wisconsin came within 2.8 lateral miles and 500 vertical feet from each other Saturday. Federal regulations require at least 1,000 feet of vertical and least 5 miles of lateral separation. One of the planes, a Cessna Caravan 208 turboprop, took off from Chicago's Midway Airport Saturday morning and was traveling to Leeward Farm, a private airport in Soldiers Grove, Wis.

The second plane, a Cirrus SR-22, was departing from the Tri-County Regional Airport near Lone Rock, Wis., when the near-miss occurred at about 3,800 feet. Last week, an air traffic controller from the Federal Aviation Administration's Chicago Center radar facility in Aurora mistakenly directed a passenger plane to descend in the path of a jet heading to O'Hare International Airport.

Those planes came within seconds of a mid-air collision over Indiana.