Commercial Planes Clip Each Other in Boston
Planes collided while taxiing at Boston Logan International Airport.
July 15, 2011— -- Authorities today are investigating the collision of two commercial passenger aircraft on a runway at Boston's Logan International Airport. One minor injury was reported.
One of the planes involved in the 7:30 p.m. incident Thursday was a 767 Delta Airlines jet, while the second was a smaller plane operated by America Southeast Airlines, a regional carrier for Delta, according to a statement released by Delta. The wing tip of the jumbo jet was sliced apart and the tail of the regional airplane was badly mangled.
"We definitely felt a jolt when the planes collided, but it wasn't, I don't know it was violent, nobody was like thrown forward in their seats or anything. We all just -- there was a general gasp," passenger Megina Bake, who was on the 767 jet, told ABC News.
The regional jet apparently turned onto a taxiway perpendicular to the taxiway that the Delta 767 was traveling on. The pilots of the Delta 767 may have thought they had room to maneuver around the smaller plane -- though is now evident that they did not.
"There were a lot of people freaking out, the girl next to me was crying and screaming," Dawn Ray, a passenger on the commuter jet said. "It was terrifying -- everyone at once said, 'what happened?'"
No one was badly hurt in the incident, though one passenger on the small plane complained of a neck injury.
"I guess I was surprised that something like that could happen, I feel like it would have been avoidable accident if everyone would have been paying attention," Bake said.
Both jets had been preparing for take off -- the Delta 767 for Amsterdam, with over 200 passengers on board, while the Delta regional jet was bound for Raleigh-Durham N.C., with some 74 passengers aboard.
"While taxiing out for departure, the wing from Flight 266 from Boston to Amsterdam made contact with the vertical stabilizer of ASA Flight 4904, also on departure from Boston to Raleigh-Durham, [N.C.]," Delta said in a prepared statement.
"Flight 266 returned to the gate and passengers deplaned without incident," the statement continued. "Passengers on ASA Flight 4904 deplaned and were transported by bus to the terminal. Both aircraft have been removed from service for inspections and passengers are currently being re-accommodated on other aircraft."
A passenger was taken to a hospital for precautionary reasons, according to an official for Massport, an agency that manages Logan Airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board will be pulling the black box recorders from the planes and getting crew statements as it investigates the incident.
The collision comes just three months after a similar mishap at New York's JFK airport, when the wing tip of a giant Airbus A380 hit the tail of a regional jet and spun it like a top.
ABC News' Anne-Marie Dorning, Matt Hosford, Chris Barry, Leonardo Mayorga and Jason Volack contributed to this report.
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