JetBlue flight crashes into empty parked plane at JFK while exiting terminal – five days after near-miss at takeoff between AA and Delta flight that would have claimed hundreds of lives
- A JetBlue plane collided with another plane at JFK on Wednesday morning
- The JetBlue flight was in pushback and preparing to taxi on the tarmac
- After the incident, the plane returned to the gate and the passengers disembarked
- There were no reported injuries
- Just days earlier, a near-fatal collision on the tarmac was narrowly avoided at JFK
In another close encounter at JFK, a JetBlue flight bound for Puerto Rico encountered an empty plane on the tarmac at New York Airport early Wednesday morning.
The incident comes just days after hundreds of lives were nearly lost at the airport when a Delta Boeing 737 and an American Airlines Boeing 777 narrowly avoided a collision while the Delta plane was taking off.
This incident is being further investigated by numerous federal agencies.
According to a passenger on board the JetBlue flight, the plane was pushed away from the gate by a pushback truck during Wednesday’s incident and was preparing to taxi before takeoff.
During the pushback, the AirBus A320 collided with another parked JetBlue AirBus A320.
After the incident, the plane returned to the gate and no injuries were reported. The airline said both planes had been taken out of service.
Passengers are returned to the terminal after a JetBlue flight collided with another plane on the tarmac
There were no reported injuries as a result of the collision
In a statement, a JetBlue spokesman said the flight to San Juan “made light contact with a parked unmanned aircraft during pushback.”
The incident is being investigated by the FAA.
The January 2 near miss was avoided thanks to a sophisticated radar system on the ground – the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X. The system collects data from censors to warn the tower of potential collisions.
Last week, the Allied Pilots Association, which represents 15,000 American Airlines pilots, raised concerns about new cockpit protocols being enforced by the airline without proper training. These procedures may become part of the FAA and TSA investigation into the incident.
The new controls have been in effect since Tuesday 11 January. According to the union, the procedures deal with communication in the cockpit during critical events such as landings in poor visibility.
“The operational changes that management is trying to implement without extensive training are transforming how pilots communicate, coordinate and execute flight safety duties during some of the most dangerous times of flight,” the Allied Pilots Association (APA) said in a post last Monday.
An incident similar to Wednesday’s occurred Jan. 2 at JFK when an ITA Airways plane touched a Delta plane on landing in New York from Rome.
No one was injured, an ITA spokesman said, adding the passengers were not aware of the impact.