Askume reported on September 10 that a Delta Airlines plane collided with a regional aircraft while taxiing for takeoff at Atlanta airport on Tuesday , causing damage to both planes, the airline and a federal agency said.
The accident resulted in severe damage to the rear of the small regional aircraft.
Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they would investigate the incident, which occurred at the intersection of two taxiways at 10:10 a.m. ET.
The wing of a Delta Airbus A350 headed for Tokyo’s Haneda Airport collided with the tail of an Endeavor CRJ-900 headed for Lafayette, Louisiana, damaging the regional plane’s tail and the A350’s wing, the airline said. Endeavor is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta Air Lines.
Delta said there were no reports of injuries among the 221 passengers on the A350 and 56 on the CRJ-900.
A number of near-crash incidents and runway incursions last year raised concerns about U.S. aviation safety and understaffing in air traffic control, prompting the National Transportation Safety Board to call for more technology to prevent collisions.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said at an industry conference Tuesday that the agency has deployed technology at some airports that will issue an alert if a plane is parked on the wrong runway or taxiway.
“We’ve started to deploy very simple, off-the-shelf solutions to give controllers better situational awareness,” Whittaker said. He added that in the first half of this year, near-misses were reduced by more than half. “So there’s been progress, but we need to do better. There’s no excuse for this to happen.”
