2 planes clip wings at Newark Liberty International Airport, no injuries reported
NEWARK, N.J. -- The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating after two planes clipped wings Friday morning at Newark Liberty International Airport.
One of the planes was full of passengers during the collision, officials said.
It happened at around 8:45 a.m. and the Port Authority Aircraft Rescue Firefighting team responded, as it does for all aviation emergencies at Port Authority airports.
A United Airlines Boeing 757 bound for Orlando was parked at a gate and waiting for departure when its left wing was clipped by the right wing of a United 787, a much larger aircraft being towed to the next gate, officials said.
The tip of one wing snapped off in the collision.
"Those are really big aircrafts and that could have been potentially dangerous. Hopefully everybody's OK," said Vielka Sanchez, a traveler from Minnesota.
Passengers were able to deplane normally and no injuries were reported. They were rebooked on later flights. There were no passengers on the second plane.
It's the latest in a string of recent incidents at Tri-State Area airports.
On Jan. 18, a JetBlue flight preparing for takeoff at Kennedy Airport struck the tail of a parked JetBlue plane while it was pushing back from the gate. No injuries were reported.
A few days earlier, disaster was narrowly averted on the JFK runway when an American Airlines plane crossed into the path of a Delta plane accelerating to take off.
The Delta pilot slammed on the brakes and missed the other aircraft by about 1,000 feet.