Air France jet clips small plane at New York airport

[snapman]

An Air France Airbus has clipped the tail of a commuter plane while taxiing at New York's John F Kennedy Airport.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2StZVDUck9M

Both planes have been grounded pending an investigation

The smaller Comair jet could be seen spinning violently on its wheels as a shower of sparks fell from the impact point just after 2000 on Monday.

The Paris-bound Airbus A380 carried 495 passengers and 25 crew, Air France said. The Comair jet had 62 passengers and four crew. No-one was injured.

The flight recorders from both aircraft will be reviewed, investigators said.

The aircraft were towed to a nearby hangar for inspection by the Federal Aviation Administration.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it was investigating the incident.

"Preliminary reports indicate that the left wing tip of Air France flight 7 struck the left horizontal stabilizer of Comair flight 293 while the Comair airplane was taxiing to its gate," the NTSB said in a statement.

Air France said it would co-operate with the investigation.

Source

 

[oneman]

Saw that yesteraday. The A380 made that Comair plane look like a toy. Maybe they underestimated clearance that the A380 would need.

Could have been much worse.

 

[Messa]

Surprised me that, I would have imagined that the tail of the smaller plane would have been sliced off or whatever, but spinning it like that was unexpected.

 

[oneman]

Apparent the control tower did tell the air france jet to stop as the comair flight had not cleared the taxi way.

 

[fireblade]

nasty stuff, hope no one was hurt.

regards fireblade.

 

[jfish]

Surprised me that, I would have imagined that the tail of the smaller plane would have been sliced off or whatever, but spinning it like that was unexpected.

wont due to the speed both planes were travelling, if this happened said in mid air and lets say the A380 cruising at 400 mph and the ComAir at 200 mph (not accurate) then the wing would slice the tail from the ComAir - happened years ago in Brazil where as a private jet slices the tail from a Boeing 737 and it crashed