FAA restricts flights at Centennial Airport after safety assessment spotlights 2 midair near-collisions

Lauren Penington, The Denver Post on Oct 21, 2026

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DENVER — Two midair near-collisions and dozens of safety incidents on Centennial Airport’s parallel runways in the last two years raised red flags, prompting federal officials to restrict certain flights, a new safety report shows.

Federal Aviation Administration investigators reviewed more than 35,500 “parallel departures” at Centennial Airport between May 2025 and April 2026, according to a copy of an FAA safety assessment released by the airport.

Of those flights, two were verified as “hazardous” near-collisions, and nine were classified as high-risk “major” events, the report stated. Investigators also recorded 49 medium- and low-risk incidents.

FAA officials did not respond to questions about what happened during the midair near-collisions.

Centennial Airport was one of nine airports evaluated that use simultaneous parallel departures, and the only one in Colorado, according to a Sept. 29 memo between FAA officials. Of those nine, Centennial saw more pilots deviating from the flight path and planes drifting off course, “resulting in unmitigated convergence,” the safety assessment stated.

Simultaneous departures on the Colorado airport’s parallel runways “present significant collision risks due to aircraft proximity, increased controller and pilot workload, and compressed reaction times,” officials wrote in the assessment.

Federal officials ultimately classified Centennial Airport as “high-risk” for parallel takeoffs, according to the safety assessment. Takeoffs at the other eight airports were a medium risk.

For now, the airport has been ordered to halt simultaneous departures from parallel runways, an FAA spokesperson said in a statement. “Updated safety measures” are expected to be implemented after a safety risk management panel next week, the spokesperson said.

The FAA Control Tower and the Airport Authority were not notified about the order before the restrictions took effect, according to a statement from Centennial Airport. Airport officials called the immediate cease in simultaneous departures “highly unusual.”

Centennial Airport “is currently not authorizing regular touch-and-go operations and has restricted most other pattern work,” airport officials said in the statement. A touch-and-go is a maneuver utilized by flight instructors where a plane lands and immediately takes off again.

The changes have had a “significant impact” on flight schools, pilots, airport businesses, aircraft owners and the broader airport community, airport officials wrote.

“Safety is, and will always remain, the highest priority for Centennial Airport,” the statement continued. “At the same time, Centennial Airport has operated at similar, and at times higher, traffic levels for decades without an accident involving aircraft departing simultaneously from our parallel runways.”

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