Two planes collided on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York on Saturday morning. While no injuries were sustained and damage was minimal, some aviation analysts say worse collisions could occur as airports are packed with smaller planes.
Two planes collided on the tarmac at John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport in New York on Saturday morning, one heading to West Palm Beach, Fla., the other landing from New Dehli, India.
No one was injured, but about 150 passengers on the JetBlue plane to Florida had to disembark and board another plane, a Port Authority spokesperson told the New York Daily News.
Jet Blue spokesman Alex Headrick told CBS that JetBlue Flight 145 had a broken tow bar and was waiting for a replacement when Air India Flight 102 collided with it.
The left wingtip of an Air India Boeing 777 clipped the rudder of the JetBlue plane. The wing tip was damaged in the collision, reported WABC, but no other damage reports were available.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.
1010 WINS' Steve Sandberg reported that some passengers arriving in New York on the 15-hour flight from India compared the jolt to hitting a pot hole or speed bump, some didn’t notice it at all and simply praised Air India for a good journey when questioned.
Seven similar incidents have occurred on tarmacs in the United States in the past two years, reported ABC. Some aviation analysts say it is because of smaller planes increasingly crowding airports.
Aviation analyst John Nance told ABC: “The nightmare element of this is we might have a collision on the ground that could split open a fuel tank and create a fire before we could get everybody safely out of the way.”
