2 Delta planes collide while taxiing at Atlanta airport, knocking tail section from one
By Pete Muntean, CNN
(CNN) — Two Delta Air Lines planes collided as both were taxiing for takeoff from Atlanta’s busy Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on Tuesday morning.
The wingtip of a Delta Airbus A350 “came into contact” with a Delta CRJ 900 regional jet operated by Endeavor Airlines, Delta Air Lines spokesperson Anthony Black said.
Nobody was injured in the collision and the passengers of the regional flight were taken back to the terminal by bus, Black said. The second aircraft taxied under its own power to an airport concourse, where passengers were able to deplane at their gate, a Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport spokesperson told CNN.
Photos obtained by CNN and posted to social media show the vertical tail of the regional flight separated from the rest of the airplane flanked by airport rescue vehicles. “That whole tail of that CRJ [Delta CRJ 900] is off,” an air traffic controller could be heard saying.
Passengers will be placed on alternate flights, Delta said in a statement. There were 221 passengers on the Airbus and 56 customers on the regional jet, the airline said.
Publicly available information from the Federal Aviation Administration shows the impacted runway is closed and several taxiways nearby are also closed.
“While Delta Air Lines Flight 295 was taxiing for departure at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, its wingtip struck the tail of Endeavor Air Flight 5526. The Delta Airbus A350 was headed to Tokyo. The Endeavor Bombardier CRJ900 was headed to Lafayette, Louisiana,” the FAA said in a statement.
The FAA said it is investigating what happened and Delta said it is cooperating with the National Transportation Safety Board “and other authorities” over the incident. Delta TechOps teams worked to safely move both aircraft to maintenance hangars at the airport, the airline said.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International was the No. 1 airport for passenger volume in 2023 and is expected to serve about 110 million passengers in 2024, according to Airports Council International’s preliminary rankings for 2023, released in April.
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