JetBlue planes collide on tarmac at Boston airport
No injuries were reported in the incident
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Your support makes all the difference.Two planes made contact at Boston Logan Airport while the aircrafts were on the tarmac and de-icing.
The left winglet of a JetBlue Flight 777 struck JetBlue Flight 551’s horizontal stabilizer around 6:40am on Thursday morning. The event happened in an area of the tarmac that the airline controls, the Federal Aviation Administration, which is investigating the incident, said.
The flights were heading to Las Vegas and Orlando.
Both lanes were Airbus 321 jets, and both were being de-iced on the tarmac at the time of the incident.
No one was hurt on either plane, and both flights were cancelled, Massachusetts Port Authority spokesperson Jennifer Mehigan said.
She described the collision as “very minor.” Passengers on-board the affected flights were moved to other aircraft.
A spokesperson for JetBlue said the incident caused damage to one aircraft’s winglet and the other aircraft’s tail section.
Both of the planes will be taken out of service for repairs and the flights will be operating on other aircrafts.
“Safety is JetBlue’s priority, and we will work to determine how and why this incident occurred,” the spokesperson said.
Mary Menna, who was on the Las Vegas flight heading to the Super Bowl, told Boston’s WBZ NewsRadio that her plane “had a little collision.”
“It was a bump. Like it wasn’t a huge crash,” she told the radio station. “You felt it, you felt the jolt, but it wasn’t extreme and then everybody was just like (gasp) and we looked out the window and saw that we had come very close to that other plane and, in fact, tore off part of its wing.
She continued: “The plane we were in had some structural damage in our wing, but our wing was still intact, but there was definitely, it wouldn’t have been able to fly,” Menna said.
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