Two United planes bump on taxiway at LaGuardia Airport amid strong winds on Friday
Planes on the tarmac outside terminal B at LaGuardia Airport in Queens on Feb. 17. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp
Two United Airlines planes carrying 343 people in total bumped into each other while they were on the ground at LaGuardia Airport on Friday evening, the airline confirmed in an e-mailed statement to Newsday.
The collision happened around 7:45 p.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. United Flight 580 clipped the tail of United Flight 434, "which was stationary on the taxiway," as it "was turning into its arrival gate," United Airlines said in its statement.
Flight 580 had just landed from Chicago O'Hare International Airport and United Flight 434 was scheduled to depart for George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
No one was injured during the collision and "both planes returned to the gate and passengers deplaned normally," United wrote in its statement. The airline did not provide information about how extensively the planes were damaged.
The cause of the collision remains unclear.
Newsday reported that wind gusts exceeding 50 mph were contributing to average flight delays of more than 90 minutes at LaGuardia on Friday. More than 100 flights were canceled at the airport between Friday night and early Saturday morning, according to flightaware.com.
FAA spokeswoman Kristen Alsop told Newsday the agency "will investigate the incident," and explained that "FAA air traffic control is not responsible for plane movements in the gate area" where the crash occurred.
The collision comes after another ground collision between two planes at LaGuardia in early October that left a flight attendant in the hospital. Those planes were operated by a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines, Newsday reported.
Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.
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