By David Shepardson
ATLANTA (Reuters) – The wing of a Delta Air Lines Inc plane collided with a regional jet as it was heading to Atlanta for departure on Tuesday, damaging both aircraft, a federal agency and the airline said.
The accident caused significant damage to the tail of the much smaller regional jet.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board said they would investigate the incident, which occurred at the intersection of two runways at about 10:10 a.m. EDT.
The airline said the wing of a Delta Airbus A350 scheduled to fly to Tokyo Haneda collided with the tail of an Endeavor Air CRJ-900 scheduled to fly to Lafayette, Louisiana, damaging the tail of the regional jet and the wing of the A350. Endeavor is a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta.
Delta said there were no reported injuries among the 221 passengers on the Airbus A350 and 56 passengers on the CRJ-900.
A number of runway collisions and incursions last year have raised concerns about aviation safety in the United States and put pressure on understaffed air traffic control, prompting the National Transportation Safety Board to call for more technology to prevent collisions.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said earlier at an industry conference on Tuesday that the agency has deployed technology at some airports that provides an alert if a plane is parked on the wrong runway or taxiway.
“We’ve started rolling out simple solutions to air traffic controllers to improve their situational awareness,” Whitaker said, adding that emergencies have more than halved in the first half of the year. “So there’s progress, but we need to get better. There’s no excuse for this to happen.”