Two Delta flights collided while taxiing at Miami International Airport over the weekend in a low-speed impact that left travelers and staff shaken, but unharmed.
One of the flights was heading to Atlanta, the other to Boston. The Boston-bound flight was pushing back from the gate when it backed into the Atlanta flight. Delta apologized to passengers for the inconvenience in a statement, according to Fox 5 Atlanta:
All individuals on board and crew members were able to deplane safely.
“Maintenance teams are evaluating the condition of the aircraft and customers have been re-accommodated on new aircraft onto their destinations,” Delta officials said.
Airports in Florida have been in rough shape for a while now. Orlando is considered one of the worst places to fly out right now, and the entire state has been suffering from a shortage of air traffic controllers. The Federal Aviation Administration reports a five percent rise in the number of flights its handling out of its Jacksonville offices. A meteoric rise in private flights and space launches hasn’t helped the situation. It’s unclear if the chaos in the skies led to this particular crash.
Collisions are nothing new. The passengers on these two Delta flights should thank their lucky stars that the crash happened on the ground. In May, two Airbus planes with the carrier Volaris nearly crashed at the Mexico City International Airport, giving us this very chilling footage:
But private flights aren’t any safer. In fact, it’s getting deadlier for folks on smaller planes. Earlier this month, two small private planes collided in midair, leaving four dead. Small plane collisions have been on the rise in recent years, according to The New York Times. While deaths on commercial flights have plunged, deaths on small plane crashes rose 347 in 2017 to 393 in 2018, the last year data is available from the National Transportation Safety Board.