One flight attendant was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after the two CRJ-900s collided while taxiing.
WASHINGTON — Two Delta Air Lines regional jets collided on the taxiway at LaGuardia Airport in New York on Wednesday night, injuring a flight attendant and damaging both aircraft in what the airline described as a “low-speed collision.”
An aircraft carrying 32 people was preparing for takeoff to Roanoke, Virginia, when its wing struck the fuselage of a plane arriving from Charlotte, North Carolina, with 61 people on board, according to a statement from Delta.
A flight attendant sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. There were no reports of passenger injuries, Delta added.
“Their right wing clipped our nose and the cockpit. We have damage to our windscreen and … some of our screens in here,” a pilot said, according to air traffic control audio.
Images of the damage showed the wing of one aircraft broken and part of the nose and cockpit window of the other deeply gouged and shattered.
Passenger William Lusk told ABC News that the plane arriving from Charlotte “stopped, jerked, and jumped to the right.” He added, “Everyone went dead silent. And as everyone went dead silent, the pilot calmly came on and said, ‘Hey, we’ve been in a crash, everyone remain calm.’”
Airport operations were not expected to be affected, according to Delta. The airline said it would work with authorities to review the incident, emphasizing that “the safety of our customers and people comes before all else.”
Both Delta Connection aircraft involved are CRJ-900 planes operated by Endeavor Air, which can seat between 70 and 90 passengers.
LaGuardia is one of 35 major airports equipped with advanced surface radar systems designed to help air traffic controllers track aircraft and vehicles on the ground and alert them to potential conflicts. It wasn’t immediately clear what role the system played in this incident.
The collision adds to a series of recent aviation safety concerns in the U.S. In August, a small plane crashed and caught fire after hitting a parked aircraft on the runway at Kalispell City Airport in Montana, injuring four.
In May, a Republic Airways flight was forced to abort takeoff after a United Airlines jet was still taxiing on the same runway in a near miss incident at LaGuardia.
In January, a regional jet collided midair with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter over Washington, D.C., as it prepared to land at Reagan National Airport. The crash, which killed 67 people, was the deadliest U.S. aviation disaster in decades.